Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/118

104 She could not finish, but Buck Daniels stepped closer, trying to make a smile grow on his ashen face.

“Another minute, Dan, and I'll tell a man you've forgotten me.”

Barry pivoted suddenly as though uneasy at finding something behind him, and Daniels winced.

“Hello, Buck. Didn't see you was here. Lee Haines? Lee, this is fine.”

He passed from one to the other and his handshake was only the elusive passage of his fingers through their palms. Haines shrugged his shoulders to get rid of a weight that clung to him; a touch of color came back to his face.

“Look here, Dan. If you're afraid that gang may trail you here and start raising the devil—how many are there?”

“Five.”

“I'm as good with a gun as I ever was in the old days. So is Buck. Partner, let's make the show down together. Stick here with Kate and Joan and Buck and I will help you hold the fort. Don't look at me like that. I mean it. Do you think I've forgotten what you did for me that night in Elkhead? Not in a thousand years. Dan, I'd rather make my last play here than any other place in the world. Let 'em come! We'll salt them down and plant them where they won't grow.”

As he talked the pallor quite left him, and the fighting fire blazed in his eyes, he stood lion-like, his feet