“I suppose yo’re right,” he said slowly. “They’ve kinda given you two the worst of it, and I know how you feel about it. You ain’t got no interests here—nothin’ to care about—so it’s all right. But with me—” Jack looked away for a moment, and back at them, with a wistful, apologetic smile—“Yuh see, I was raised here, and these are my people.”
Just that and nothing more. He had explained in a few words. Hashknife nodded slowly, a serious expression in his gray eyes. Then he suddenly held out his hand to Jack.
“You —— kid!” he said seriously as they shook hands.
“You don’t blame me, do yuh?” asked Jack wonderingly.
“Blame yuh?” Hashknife laughed, joyfully. “I just been wonderin’ if you was worth helpin’, Hartwell—and yuh are. Let’s go!”
Marsh Hartwell leaned against a rear wheel of the chuck wagon in Six Mile gulch and looked moodily at Honey Wier and Chet Spiers, who were seated on the ground, cutting sticks of dynamite into proper lengths for their purpose.
Grouped around them were old Sam Hodges, Cliff Vane, Frank Hall and Bill Brownlee, each man with a cup of coffee in his hand. The chuck wagon had been shoved into the brush, until only the rear end was visible, and the little clearing in which it stood was so well masked by brush that it would not be visible from fifty yards away on any side.
“How about that for a bomb?” asked Honey Wier, holding up a bundle of short pieces of dynamite, from which a five-inch fuse projected. “That ought to make a mutton stew, eh?”
“That’s the ticket,” nodded Vane. “We’ll give every man a load of ’em, and we’ll blow all the —— sheep back into Sunland in one night. How do you like the idea, Marsh?”
Marsh Hartwell lifted his head,