Clay leaned against the bars negligently. He spoke with a touch of lazy scorn. "See those scars on his face, Shiny—the one on the cheek bone and the other above the eye. Ask him where he got 'em and how."
Jerry cursed. He broke into a storm of threats, anger sweeping over him in furious gusts. He had come to make sport of his victim and Lindsay somehow took the upper hand at once. He had this fellow where he wanted him at last. Yet the man's soft voice still carried the note of easy contempt. If the Arizonan was afraid, he gave no least sign of it.
"You'll sing another tune before I'm through with you," the prize-fighter prophesied savagely.
The Westerner turned away and swung back to his upper berth. He knew, what he had before suspected, that Durand was going to "frame" him if he could. That information gained, the man no longer interested him.
Sullenly Jerry left. There was no profit in jeering at Lindsay. He was too entirely master of every situation that confronted him.
Within the hour Clay was wakened from sleep by another guard with word that he was wanted at the office of the warden. He found waiting him there Beatrice and her father. The girl bloomed in that dingy room like a cactus in the desert.
She came toward him with hands extended, in her eyes gifts of friendship and faith.
"Oh, Clay!" she cried.
"Much obliged, little pardner." Her voice went to his heart like water to the thirsty roots of prickly pears. A warm glow beat through his veins. The doubts that had weighed on him during the night were gone. Beatrice believed in him. All was well with the world.
He shook hands with Whitford. "Blamed good of you to come, sir."