“Oh, all right,” sighed Lee. “I know I’d like to have that eight thousand dollars back from you. You better give it to me pretty quick, because I can’t cover it up very long.”
“Why can’t yuh? The round-up count can be long. You handle all the business for the X Bar 6, and you can add those cattle to your report. They don’t know the sale was made.”
“Compound a felony, eh? Turn crook for you, Tex?”
“Turn ——! Listen, Lee.” Tex leaned across the desk and poked a finger at Lee’s nose. “Yo’re as crooked as a snake in a cactus patch. You’d double-cross yore best friend for a dollar. Don’t swaller so hard! I mean what I’m tellin’ yuh. You told me about that Santa Rita pay-roll, because you wanted yore cut out of it, and yo’re sore because yuh didn’t get it.
“I haven’t any eight thousand dollars —— yuh; I ain’t got no way to get eight thousand dollars. And what’s more, I don’t think I’d give it to yuh if I had it. Now, roll that up in some tar-paper and smoke it. Any old time you start playin’ saint to my sins, yo’re goin’ to get in wrong. Now, think it over.”
Tex surged away from the desk, and went out, scraping his spurs angrily, while Lee Barnhardt looked after him, gloomy-eyed, his lips compressed tightly. Finally he sighed and shook his head.
“Lee, your sins are finding you out,” he said softly. “That poor fool is trying to bluff you—and he almost did.”
X—HASHKNIFE AND SLEEPY, PHILANTHROPISTS
“This old place is sure pleasin’ to the naked eye,” said Hashknife the following morning, while Sleepy washed his face noisily at the old wash-bench near the kitchen door. “I like this old patio, Sleepy. Them walls were sure built to ward off bullets.”
“Yeah, and we’re in a peaceable neighborhood,” grunted Sleepy, his eyes shut against the sting of soap-suds, while he pawed awkwardly along the wall, trying to locate the towel, which Hashknife had deftly removed.