Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/72

 "She's John Moore's girl," MacKinnon replied, impatient with the interposition of such a trivial thing as a girl in a serious business like this.

"She said her father might give me a job. I'm goin' to strike him for one when the train pulls in. After I see him I'll take my carcass to some other hotel, if my room's worth more than my money to you."

"If you're alive after the nine-twenty goes you can have my house and lot!"

"The same room I had will be enough," Dunham replied.

"It's lookin' like rain," MacKinnon said, sniffing at the door as if he smelled it, uneasy over his presence there, Dunham knew. "It'll be a bad night for shootin', at the best. By nine o'clock you'll not be able to see a man twenty feet away unless you catch him passin' a light. You wasn't intendin' to wait here for him to come, Bill?"

"No, I'll not wait here," Dunham assured him.

He had lapsed again into that cloud of gloomy introspection that had caused the hardware—mayor to set him down for a dunce. He did not lift his eyes when he answered MacKinnon, standing with back to the showcase, thumbs hooked in his belt, head drooping, thinking not so much of the man whom he was to meet in battle for his life as the one they had picked up lately out of the street and carried away on a board.

He regretted the deed poignantly, but he was not sorry for the man. He might have compromised with his self-respect, grinned weakly and stood their devil-