‘Woman, eh?’
He laughed foolishly. ‘Woman came on my place. Woman and horse meat. Don’t move. Woman, horse meat, and them damn buzzards. What ’r yuh doin’ here, I asked yuh?’
There was no question that the man was insane; dangerously insane. The fire was dying out now. Unconscious of the danger, Rex reached down to pick up a piece of wood, and a bullet smashed the dirt beneath his knuckles. The report of the heavy cartridge echoed back from the cliffs, and Rex almost fell over backwards.
‘I tell yuh I’ll kill yuh,’ declared Briggs. ‘I own this place, and I don’t ’low nobody here.’
‘Will you let us go away?’ asked Nan, hardly speaking above a whisper.
‘No! You’d tell somebody where I am. You can’t go.’
‘We wouldn’t tell,’ croaked Rex pleadingly.
‘You’re a liar! You can’t go. I run this place. Don’t you try to pick up anythin’.’
‘Where do you live?’ asked Nan. She wanted to change the subject, to get his mind off killing some one.
‘Never mind where I live. You’ll find out soon enough. That’s what they all want to know. Everybody asks me where I live, but I don’t tell. C’mon.’