“You’re neighborly enough, even if you visited us by deputy this morning,” Hollister answered, level gaze fixed on the cattleman.
“Did I visit you by deputy?” Jake asked, gently ironical.
“Didn’t you? One with six sticks of dynamite to help us on the job.”
“News to me. How about it, Cig? What’s yore smart-aleck friend drivin’ at?”
Cig had crept forward to the fire and lay crouched on the hearth. His twitching face registered the torture of a circulation beginning to normalize itself again in frozen hands and feet.
“Said he’d turn me over to that guy Reed. Took advantage of me while I was played out to beat me up,” snarled the city tough. He finished with a string of vile epithets.
The splenetic laughter of the cattleman cackled out. “So you’re aimin’ to take Cig here down to Daniels with that cock-an’-bull story you cooked up. Is that the play?”
“Yes, I’m going to take him down—now or later.”
This appeared to amuse the little man. His cracked laughter sounded again. “Now or later, by jimmy by jinks. My hobo friend, if you’d lived in this country long as I have, you wouldn’t gamble heavy on that ‘later.’ If you’d read yore Bible proper, you’d know that man’s days are as grass, which withers up considerable an’ sudden. Things happen in this world of woe right onexpected.”
Tug did not dodge this covert threat. He dragged it into the open. “What could happen to me now we’re safe out of the storm, Mr. Prowers?”