Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/196

 “Going! Me?” Nash exclaimed. “Do you mean that you’re going to keep my wife here with you—alone?”

“Just that,” said Moran. “Your ideas of propriety seemed to have undergone a change since last we met. I’ll take charge of your gun and you can start.” He pulled Nash’s gun from its holster and stepped back, He knew that Nash could not have found his way so far into the hills alone. “Who is with you?’ he asked.

“I came alone.” His eyes slipped away from Moran’s as he answered.

“Then you fired that shot I heard this afternoon. I notice considerable elk hair on your clothes. You killed an elk for meat?” Nash nodded assent and Moran flipped out the cylinder of the gun and squinted through the barrel toward the fire, snapped it shut and looked at Nash. “You can trot along back to the man who killed that elk,” he said, motioning to the door.

Nash felt safe since he had been deprived of his gun; more secure than while he had worn it. He shook his finger at Moran.

“I’ll break you for this, Moran,” he threatened. “Don’t you know there is such a thing as law? You can’t come between man and wife.” He