Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/201

 "Is that so?" said Hall, reaching for the rest of the shells.

"Yes, that's so," tartly, with a scornful look for such a hollow piece of trickery. "You wasn't in no danger, you ain't under no favor to nobody for savin' you from gittin' a forty-four between the eyes! Where's that loaded shell?"

"You can search me," said Hall, making it as a disclaimer, rather than an offer which might have embarrassed him a little if Jim had accepted.

Jim's manner began to soften, the combative stiffness to relax, as he unkinked his eyebrows and pulled in his chin. He snorted as if he had dust in his nose, turning it off into a chuckle, a gleam of humor in his small, hog eyes.

"Well, Doc, I ain't a blamin' you for tryin' to make yourself look little where most men'd bust a hamestring to look big. Most men'd 'a' throwed in a few loaded shells in place of an empty one, to make a full house, but any man that knows a gun from a turnip'd 'a' throwed in the same kind of shells."

"That's funny," said Hall, red to the core, it seemed to him, he was so furiously confused.

Jim had some kind of a remote, dim feeling of sympathy for this painful mortification, but he wasn't quite ready to let the young man off.

"It wouldn't 'a' been a bad joke, neither, if you could 'a' got away with it, Doc. But I don't see why you want to pretend you wasn't in no danger when you was."

"Suppose we let it pass," Hall suggested, making it almost an appeal, looking up suddenly from his confusion over the shells.