culous.

His first impulse had been to give way to the excitement which stirred
him, but he restrained himself.

"Ten thousand dollars will be paid by me to the man, or his nominee,
privately, if his information leads to the hanging of this gang. Say,
boy, we ain't goin' to split hairs or play any low games on this lay
out. I'm a rich man, an' ten thousand dollars ain't a circumstance so
we break up this gang. If we only get one of 'em or part of 'em, the
man who shows me their hiding-place, and leads me to it, that man--or
his wife--gets my ten thousand dollars. You can have it in writing.
But my word goes any old time. Now you can get busy and hand me the
proposition."

The steady eyes, the emphatic tones of this big, straight-dealing
rancher silenced the last doubt in Bob's lesser mind. He was out to do
this dirty work with all his might in the interest of the woman who had
inspired it. But he had scarcely been prepared for such simple methods
as this man displayed. He had felt that it was for him to barter, to
scheme, to secure the dollars Effie coveted. A deep sigh escaped him.
It may have been relief. It may have been of regret that he must stand
before so straight-dealing a personality claiming his thirty pieces of
silver.

He passed one hand across his perspiring brow and thrust his prairie
hat farther back upon his head. He would have preferred, however, to
have drawn it down over his eyes to escape the searching gaze from the
honest depths of the other's. Suddenly, with a gesture of impatience,
he began to talk rapidly.

"It's no use, Mr. McFarlane, I hate this rotten work," he cried out.
"I--I hate it so bad I could just rather bite my tongue out than tell
you the things I've got to. It's rotten. I don't know---- Say, you
don't know me, and I don't guess you care a curse anyway. But I was
brought up in a city and taught to believe things were a deal better
than I've lately come to think they are. Psha! These fellers have got
to be hanged when and where we get them. But it hurts me bad to think
that I've got to take dollars for handing you their lives. Oh, that
don't tell you a thing either. You'd say I don't need to take 'em.
But I do. I got to take those dollars, if they blister my hands and
burn the bones inside 'em. I've got to have 'em, and I'd like to burn
'em, every blazing one. But I've got to have 'em. Say, I'll be paid
on the nail when the job's done? If I get shot up