“Wrong guess, old hoss. I do mean it.”
Davis stopped in his tracks. “Then you’ve said too much to me. We’ll part right here.”
“It takes two to agree to that, Slats.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. One is enough. We used to be good friends, but those days are past. None of us can keep a man from being a durned fool if he wants to be one. Nor a scoundrel. You’ve got the bit in your teeth and I reckon you’ll go till there is a smash. But you better understand this. When you choose Soapy Stone’s, crowd to run with that cuts out me and other decent folks. If they have sent you here to get me mixed up in their deviltry you go back and tell them there’s nothing doing.”
“Won’t have a thing to do with them. Is that it?”
“Not till the call comes for citizens to get together and run them out of the country. Or to put them behind bars. Or to string them to a cottonwood. Then I’ll be on the job.”
He stood there quiet and easy, the look in his steady eyes piercing Curly’s ironic smile as a summer sun does mackerel clouds in a clear sky. Not many men would have had the courage to send that message to Soapy and his outfit. For Stone was not only a man killer, but a mean one at that. Since he had come back from the penitentiary he had been lying pretty low, but he brought down from the old days a record that chilled the blood.
Curly sloughed his foolishness and came to the point.
“You’re on, Slats. I’m making that call to you now.”
The eyes of the two men fastened. Those of Flandrau had quit dancing and were steady as the sun in a blue sky. Surprise, doubt, wonder, relief filled in turn the face of the other man.