Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/219

 street cat might eye a canary behind its cage-bars.

"It's working as smooth as oil," answered McKinnon, adjusting his receiver again and listening for a minute or two. "But we're too far away from things. We're drifting too far away from a white man's world."

Ganley sat down with his slow and ponderous deliberateness. McKinnon found it hard to say just what he wanted to say, for the weight of their last encounter was still heavy on his spirit.

The other man seemed to understand the source of his embarrassment. He sat back, at last, and diffidently remarked: "You had something to say to me?"

McKinnon reached a long thin arm over to the back of his operating-table.

"Yes, I'd forgotten to give you back this gun of yours," he said, as he held the revolver out to its owner.

Ganley took it, diffidently, turned it over in his fingers, puckered his heavy lips, and casually dropped the gun into his side pocket. Then he looked up at the other man.

"That was pretty ugly talk you got about me the other night," he began, sliding low in his chair until his attitude was nothing more than a nonchalant lounge. "I suppose you