“Oh, but you don’t see what we mean. It isn’t that we want to hurt you.” She spoke in a quick eager voice of protest.
“No, you just want me to squeal on my friends to save my own hide. Nothing doing, Miss Cullison.”
“No. You’re wrong. Why are you so suspicious?”
Curly laughed bitterly. “Your boys were asking that question about Soapy last night. They had a rope round my neck at the time. Nothing unfriendly in the matter, of course. Just a casual interest in my doings.”
Cullison was looking at him with the steel eyes that bored into him like a gimlet. Now he spoke sharply.
“I’ve got an account running with Soapy Stone. Some day I’ll settle it likely. But that ain’t the point now. Do you know his friends—the bunch he trails with?”
Wariness still seemed to crouch in the cool eyes of Flandrau.
“And if I say yes, I’ll bet your next question will be about the time and the place I last saw them.”
Kate picked up a photograph from the table and handed it to the prisoner. “We’re not interested in his friends—except one of them. Did you ever see the boy that sat for that picture?”
The print was a snapshot of a boy about nineteen, a good looking handsome fellow, a little sulky around the mouth but with a pair of straight honest eyes.