Page:Son of the wind.djvu/12

 ron stretched his neck a little more eagerly, and his incredulous smile quickened with excitement. He looked straight through the resistance, the denials. For a moment he absorbed the aspect of that figure planted there in the white road; then risked the reins and got out of the runabout.

The fellow seemed ready either to strike him or to dart away, but Carron stood quite still. "Look here," he said persuasively, "we both talked a good deal last night, but you seem to think you said too much, and you think I want to take advantage of it. Well, I do. What you told me has taken my fancy, but I want to be on the square about it. Of course, I know you are not going to give information you are not supposed to give; but where's the harm in telling me who your friends are? Then, if they don't want to talk, let them say so, and that will be the end of it."

While he was speaking he had been walking leisurely forward, until, as he ended, he stopped just in front of his antagonist. He reached, took, and grasped the limp left hand, drawing it forward in front of him, by the warmth and energy of his own, forcing a nervous involuntary pressure from it. He released it, and it stayed as if hypnotized out-stretched, palm up, with a gold piece of twenty dollars in it.