Dutch did not answer at once. Inside, he surged with murderous impulse. He might beat this fellow McClintock to the draw. He had always boasted that he wanted no more than an even break with any man alive. Well, he had it here.
“Who says I left it there?” he demanded.
“I’m asking if you did.”
The killer’s right hand hung motionless. A weight paralyzed his will. These McClintocks had the Indian sign on him. Deep in him a voice whispered that if he accepted the challenge he was lost. Better wait and get this fellow right when he had no chance.
“No-o.” To Dutch it seemed that the husky monosyllable was dragged out of him by some external force.
Tauntingly the cold voice jeered him. “Not you, then, that bushwhacked me in the alley and tried to shoot me in the back? Wouldn’t do that, would you, Dutch? Got all yore fourteen on the level, of course.”
“I aim to—to give every man a show,” the gunman muttered.
“Good of you. Then it couldn’t have been you that threw this knife at me and tried to gun me. It was dark. I couldn’t make out his face, but I left the marks of my fist on it a-plenty.”
Now that it seemed there was to be no gun-play the watchers had come into the open. A battery of eyes focussed on the hammered face of Dutch. Cut lips, a black eye, purple weals on the forehead, and swollen cheeks told of recent punishment.
“I fell down a prospect hole,” the bad man mentioned.