Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/233

Rh "Well?" he demanded sharply as Steele came in.

"Where's Turk Wilson?" asked Steele.

"Just left; I sent him out to the Goblet; was coming over myself in a few minutes." Steele stood for a little, silently looking into Hurley's anxious eyes.

"Like your new job, Ed?" he asked lightly. "No," blurted out Hurley, coming to a stop and frowning soberly. "I don't. I don't mind a scrap any more than the next fellow, I guess; but by Heaven, I do hate just waiting for it to be pulled off."

"So you think it's coming, too?"

"With all that money in plain sight?" grunted Hurley. "With men like Joe Embry and that tin horn Truitt and the ragtag and bobtail that hangs out at the dance …. You know as well as I do, don't you, Bill?"

Steele's reply lay in his stepping to his bunk, tossing back a thin mattress and taking out an automatic forty-five. He glanced at the sun, slipped it into his pocket.

"If you run across Joe Embry in the dark," said Hurley, his hand for a moment on Steele's arm, "you just shoot first, Bill, and ask questions afterwards. After the way you did him up the other … Why, man, he could plug you, swear he did it in self-defence and then drag both Miss Corliss and me into court to testify to your having attacked him once before!"

"I know Joe Embry rather well, Ed," was the quiet rejoiner [sic]. "So well that I know that he isn't going to let a chance like tonight's slip by him. As usual he'll