In spite of that smile, or perhaps because of it, Mackenzie felt again that flash of doubt. “What’s the use of talking foolishness, Luck? Course you didn’t do it. Anybody would know that. Man, I whiles wonder at you,” he protested, relapsing into his native tongue as he sometimes did when excited.
“I didn’t say I did it. I said I might have done it”
“Oh, well! You didn’t. I know you too well.”
But the trouble was Mackenzie did not know him well enough. Cullison was hard up, close to the wall. How far would he go to save himself? Thirty years before when they had been wild young lads these two had hunted their fun together. Luck had always been the leader, had always been ready for any daredeviltry that came to his mind. He had been the kind to go the limit in whatever he undertook, to play it to a finish in spite of opposition. And what a man is he must be to the end. In his slow, troubled fashion, Mac wondered if his old side partner’s streak of lawlessness would take him as far as a hold-up. Of course it would not, he assured himself; but he could not get the ridiculous notion out of his head. It drew his thoughts, and at last his steps toward the express office where the hold-up had taken place.
He opened a futile conversation with Hawley, while Len Rogers, the guard who had not made good, looked at him with a persistent, hostile eye.
“Hard luck,” the cattleman condoled.
“That’s what you think, is it? You and your friends, too, I reckon.”
Mackenzie looked at the guard, who was plainly sore in every humiliated crevice of his brain. “I ain’t speaking for my friends, Len, but for myself,” he said amiably.
Rogers laughed harshly. “Didn’t know but what you might be speaking for one of your friends.”
“They can all speak for themselves when they have got anything to say.”