"But a dead sure shot."
"He'd funk it," said Dick, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there now for two years and he's never so much as fired a shot over it. Now that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek, he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five corpses over it."
He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.
The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.
"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."
Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.
As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised when they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut. Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up, shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment, and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened again.
"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in Dick's shoes when he do come."
There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of the coming contest.
At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles. He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.