Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/188

 away, as if the sight of the cool egotist before him might provoke an outburst that would be unseemly to his financial dignity, his eyes on the hills across the river. Presently he turned.

"Meanin' me?" he asked, his voice threateningly calm, as the voice of a man who has made up his mind to fight.

"You're free to apply it wherever you think it fits, Burnett."

"You're makin' some purty wide charges for a man that don't know any more about the people of this town than you do, Hall. Between me and you it'll pass—this one time. But when you make a talk about four-flushers and cheap gamblers again, you take pains to make exceptions to me—by name."

"I seem to recall another time," said Hall, a little laughing jeer in his tone, "when you made a big front warning me how I must talk about you. I haven't heard anything drop."

"You'll hear it, all right all right! And let me pass this out to you: Stick to your business down here with the railroaders. We've got our own doctor up-town."

Burnett put an end to the altercation with that, leaving his warning with Hall, to do what he liked about it. Hall stood at his door, looking after Burnett as he went swaggering back to the depot, feeling a contracting coldness coming over his spirits, portending more trouble for him in that miserable patch of scurvy town.

"Poor business to stand here jawing with that man," he thought.

Poor and undignified business, indeed, wrangling like an old woman, full of vain words, and declarations which time might check up on him with a demand to make good.