Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/283

 from a convicted conscience. No indictment of a grand jury can compare with the arraignment that remorseful guilt pours out against itself.

"I'm sorry there was any misunderstanding of my position and intentions here from the first," Hall said presently.

"I was an old clown," Ross said, contemptuous of himself. "I put on a show for a bunch of single-barreled sports."

"Yes, I figured it that way," Hall replied.

"You've been square with me," Ross said, turning in his chair suddenly, his face so set in its habitual expression of severity it seemed incapable of any change except the rise and fall of color. His attitude and stern look seemed to threaten assault, but it was only the bearing of a man whose habits and deeds made a constant front of belligerence necessary to keep him from sinking under the contemptuous familiarity of the base.

"I tried to explain that I wasn't to be considered a competitor. There's nothing more to be said, that I can see."

Hall tried to pass it lightly, desiring to spare the man any further humiliation. Ross shook his head, appreciative of the courtesy, but refusing to spare himself.

"When a man's played 'em fools for twenty years it rubs the hair off to have 'em turn the trick," he said. "I've come into towns like this and convinced sixty percent of 'em in two days that they either had fits that minute or was liable to have 'em the next. I've sold communities like this enough potassium iodide and aloes at five dollars a bottle to float the Great Eastern. It wasn't so much because I was a quack as because I was a