Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/180

 Ed, no more than you can drownd a frog. I went to sce him about killin' a feller the day I met you in Saunders."

"The devil you did!" Looking up in astonishment at the confession so frankly and casually made.

"Charley wouldn't take the case. Said to kill him first and then come to see him. But he said it wasn't no game for a cowpuncher like me, and I tell you, Ed, I believed him when he told me what it cost. So that's why that man's a livin' now."

"Was it another man, or"

"Same one, Ed. Foreman of my bunch, little pock-marked, tow-headed devil with his front teeth slantin' out like a roof from pullin' on dried beef they used to feed him and bring him up on when he was a kid down in Texas. Wasn't worth it, Ed. I wouldn't give three to five thousand dollars to shoot that man if I had as much money as Hal Nearing."

"I don't believe you'd get that much fun out of it," Barrett returned, his own conscience still unquiet, still under the melancholy cloud of the deed necessity had set to his hand.

"I'd like to know what old Charley's up here in Bonita for," Dan ran on, unable to get away from the remarkable event. "Nobody ain't been killed up here lately that'd be worth his time to fool with."

The question of the lawyer's presence in Bonita appeared to be answered in part, at least, when the two friends left the dining-room. Dale Findlay and Thomson were lighting cigars from the box of the best brand Cattle Kate sold. Shoulder to shoulder, Thomson talk-