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 dictively all through the meal, looking up from his operations occasionally with his round glassy eyes more bulging and expressionless than usual, as if to begin the one-sided quarrel again. But he evidently thought better or worse of it, and held his peace until he was through.

When Peck pushed back, everything cleared up, he seemed to be in a better humor. His thin face was glowing with replenishment; he stroked the grease and coffee out of his prideful moustache with both hands, giving a twirling, wringing movement to his fingers that was marvelously efficient for the job. He looked at Rawlins with the expressionless round stare of an octopus in his big eyes, in which there seemed to be something of insolence, something of malevolent greed, yet all so far dispersed over the hard glittering globes as to be elusive and undefinable.

"I'm goin' to be square with you, Rawlins," Peck said, producing a wallet as suddenly as it was astonishing. "I'm goin' to pay you, cash money, for your shack and so-called improvements on this place, and take your receipt for it. Then you're goin' to hit the breeze."

Rawlins was so amazed by this sudden discovery of Peck's hand that he sat across the table from him, staring. He was uncertain whether Peck was trying to pull off some kind of a joke of his own, to even past scores, or whether he had some fool notion in his head for getting possession of the homestead, the choicest site for sheep headquarters in that locality, as the sheepmen on the coroner's jury had said.

"What the devil are you drivin' at, Peck?" he asked