“Do I have to get your say-so before I can talk, Falkner? I’ll say to you, too, what I’m saying to the man beside you. There can’t any of you—no, nor all of you—run me out the way you did Pap Thomson. Try anything like that, and you’ll find me lying right in the door of my sheep wagon with hell popping. Hear that, McCoy?”
“Yes, I hear you.” McCoy looked at him hard. One could have gathered no impression of weakness from the lean brown face of the cattleman. The blue-gray eyes were direct and steely. Power lay in the packed muscles of the stocky frame. Confidence rested in the set of the broad shoulders and the poise of the close-cropped head. “I didn’t write that letter to you, and I don’t know who did. But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Keep your sheep on the other side of the dead line. They’ll maybe live longer.”
The sheepman shook a fist at him furiously. “That’s a threat, McCoy. Don’t you back it. Don’t you dare lift a finger to my sheep. I’ll run them where I please. I’ll bring ’em right up to the door of the Circle Diamond, too, if it suits me.”
A young ranchman lounging in the doorway cut into the talk. “I reckon you can bring ’em there, Joe, but I ain’t so sure you could take ’em away again.”
“Who’d stop me?” demanded Tait, whirling on him. “Would it be you, Jack Cole?”
“I might be there, and I might not. You never can tell.”
Tait took a step toward him. The undisciplined temper of the man was boiling up. He had for nearly two days been drinking heavily.
“Might as well settle this now—the sooner the quicker,” he said thickly.
Sharply McCoy spoke: “We’re none of us armed, Tait. Don’t make a mistake.”
The sheep owner threw his revolver on the counter. “I don’t need any gun to settle any business I’ve got with Jack Cole.”