The man swaggered forward, the lash of the whip trailing across the puncheon floor. Triumph rode in his voice and straddled in his gait. He stood with his back to the fireplace absorbing heat, hands behind him and feet set wide. His eyes gloated over the victims he had trapped. Presently he would settle with both of them.
"Not a word to say for yoreselves, either one o' you," he jeered. "Good enough. I'll do what talkin' 's needed, then I'll strip the hide off'n both o' you." With a flirt of the arm he sent the lash of the dog-whip snaking out toward Jessie.
She shrank back against the wall, needlessly. It was a threat, not an attack; a promise of what was to come.
"Let her alone." They were the first words Whaley had spoken. In his soft, purring voice they carried out the suggestion of his crouched tenseness. If West was the grizzly bear, the other was the forest panther, more feline, but just as dangerous.
The convict looked at him, eyes narrowed, head thrust forward and down. "What's that?"
"I said to let her alone."
West's face heliographed amazement. "Meanin'—?"
"Meaning exactly what I say. You'll not touch her."
It was a moment before this flat defiance reached the brain of the big man through the penumbra of his mental fog. When it did, he strode across the room with the roar of a wild animal and snatched the girl to him. He would show whether any one could come between him and his woman.
In three long steps Whaley padded across the floor. Something cold and round pressed against the back of the outlaw's tough red neck.