"I'm sorry, Bull," she resumed, when he made no reply, "but I got a derringer pointin' straight at yore stomach. Now you ain't gonna lemme make a mess on my clean carpet, are you?"
Bull released her wrist as though it burnt him.
"You devil!" he exclaimed. "I believe you'd do it."
"Shore I would," she affirmed, serenely, dragging a small and ugly derringer from its place of concealment and balancing it on a pink palm. "I'll drill you in one blessed minute if you don't keep yore paws to home. They's some things, Bull, you can't do to me. An' one of them things is hurting me. I don't believe in corporal punishment, Bull."
"I wanna know what you horned in for," he demanded, pounding the table till the lamp danced again.
"If you only knowed what a silly fool you looked," she commented, "you'd sit down and take it easy…. That's right, tell the neighbours, do! Squawk out good and loud how yore bushwhackin' li'l killing turned out a misdeal. Shore, I'd do that, if I was you. Whadda you guess they pay Jake Rule an' Kansas Casey for, huh?"
"What did you get in front of him for?" Bull persisted in a lower tone. "I pretty near had him, but you—Gawd, I could wring yore neck!"
"But you won't," she reminded him, sweetly. "Lookit here, Bull, if you hadn't locked the door leading up the stairs to the Starlight's loft, I'd 'a' come after you there and done my persuadin' of you right in the loft. As it was when I heard what you were up to—nemmine how I heard. I heard, that's enough—I had to go out in the street and do what I could there. I don't believe the feller liked it much, neither."
"But what's he to you? You ain't soft on him, are you, account of what he done for that yellow mutt of yores?"
"I owe him something," she evaded. "That dog—I like that dog. And then that man treats me like a lady. It ain't every man treats me like a lady."