They drank silently and turned toward the door.
“Yo’re quite a ways away from home, ain’t yuh?” asked Cultus.
Terry jerked around quickly, staring hard at Cultus.
“I guess yo’re mistaken, ain’t yuh?” he asked.
“How did you know I was speakin’ to you?”
“Well?” queried Terry coldly.
“Oh, nothin’ particular,” said Cultus easily. “I wasn’t tryin’ to scrape an acquaintance with you; and you are quite a ways from Mesquite City, yuh know.”
Cultus shifted his eyes back to his paper, hunched down in the chair and ignored Terry entirely. For several moments the Triangle X cowboy studied Cultus Collins, his lips drawn back in a sneering grin. He started to say something more, but Hank touched him on the arm, and they went out together. The bartender sighed with relief.
“I shore thought there was goin’ to be trouble,” he said. Cultus glanced at him and shook his head.
“A coyote never bites yuh when yo’re lookin’ at him, unless yuh got him cornered; and that one had room to run.”