Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/16

 said no more, but sat with frowning eyes fixed in abstract gaze on whatever hypothetical situation he may have conjured up in his crafty mind. Presently he put his pipe on the cluttered table, where the handle of a notarial seal lifted out of the drift of old papers and tattered books like a smothered word of truth appealing its own sad case.

"I don't like for a man to come to me and tell me he's goin' to kill somebody," Thomson said, severely. "It ain't my business to give advice on how a man can be killed with the minimum of risk and the maximum of justification. My business is to get him off after he's done it."

He looked sharply at the young man, who moved his feet uneasily, colored hotly, dropped his eyes.

"Yes sir, Mr. Thomson," said he.

"So the only thing I've got to say to you, Mr. "

"Dan Gustin is my name." The young man gave it to him straight in the eyes, with head lifted quickly, as a man delivers something of which he is not ashamed.

"Mr. Dan Gustin, of"

"I'm with the Elk Mountain Cattle Company, over on the Big Wind—the Diamond Tail brand."

"Of the Diamond Tail brand, is to go out and kill your man, then come to me. That is—" turning again from the table, as with an afterthought—"if you've got to kill him. I'm not advisin' you to go and do it, but if you've got to work it out of your system, my part in the transaction is after, not before, the fact."

"Yes sir," said Dan Gustin, in the same respectfully perfunctory way as before. He stood a little while