“Only the first round ended, looks like, Bandy,” Dud said genially. “You better be lookin’ this time when he comes at you, or he’ll sure eat you alive.”
“I’m not lookin’ for no fight,” Bandy said sulkily, dabbing at his face with the bandanna round his neck.
“I’ll bet you ain’t—not with a catamount like Miss Roberta here,” Tom Reeves said, chuckling with delight.
One idea still obsessed Bob’s consciousness. “What he said about June—I’ll not let him get away with it. He’s got to tell you-all he was lyin’.”
“You hear yore boss speak, Bandy,” drawled Dud. “How about it? Do we get to see you massacreed again? Or do you stand up an’ admit you’re a dirty liar for talkin’ thataway?”
Bandy Walker looked round on a circle of faces all unfriendly to him. He had broken the code, and he knew it. In the outdoor West a man does not slander a good woman without the chance of having to pay for it. The puncher had let his bad bullying temper run away with him. He had done it because he had supposed Dillon harmless, to vent on him the spleen he could not safely empty upon Dud Hollister’s blond head.
If Bob had been alone the bow-legged man might have taken a chance—though it is doubtful whether he would have invited that whirlwind attack again, unless he had had a revolver close at hand—but he knew public sentiment was wholly against him. There was nothing to do but to swallow his words.
That he did this in the most ungracious way possible was like him. “Since you’re runnin’ a Sunday School outfit I’ll pack my roll an’ move on to-morrow to where there’s some he-men,” he sneered. “I never met this girl, so I don’t know a thing about her. All I did was to make a general remark about women. Which same I know to be true. But since you’re a bunch of sky pilots at the Slash Lazy D, I’ll withdraw anything that hurts yore tender feelin’s.”
“Are you takin’ back what you said—about—about her?” Bob demanded harshly.
Bandy’s smouldering, sullen eyes slid round. “I’m takin’ it back. Didn’t you hear me say I don’ know a thing about her? I know Houck, though. So I judged—” He spat a loose tooth out on the floor venomously. It would perhaps not be wise to put into words what he had deduced from his knowledge of Jake Houck.