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 rattler! If Mackey's half the man I think he is he'll cut your throat for that little trick!"

"He's not even that much of a man!"

"I'm sorry I didn't—"

"Let me talk a minute, Henry," said Fannie, something of her old sauciness in her manner, broken in spirit as she seemed to be. "Ever since I began to help Mackey shove his counterfeit money and raised bills, I've been holding a hand against you, waiting for the day when I was ready to make a big clean-up and quit."

"You never had anything on me, you little—"

"Johnnie's not much of a man, but he will stand by his friends—up to a certain time," she continued, unmoved by Stott's interruption. "We fussed over it the night before I went down there to help you trap Texas. Johnnie tried to kill me that time. I was afraid of the little devil after that."

Stott rolled his head, laughed a little, played with a pencil on his desk. He seemed rather amused by this attempt to trouble the waters of his security.

"I never trusted Mackey, even when we were as thick as we could be mixed, for he's a man that will throw anybody to save himself, and I started out early to get a cinch on him that I could twist when the time came. I got it, Henry."

"Well, go an' hold him up," Stott suggested mockingly.