his face. His teeth showed between his parted lips; he carried his
right arm in front, crooked at the elbow, his fingers curved.

Slavens saw that all thought of the coat had gone but of Shanklin's
mind. The old gambler did not so much as turn his head. Slavens threw
the coat across his saddle as Boyle came up.

"Well, what have you got to say to it, you dirty old thief?" demanded
Boyle, plunging into the matter as if preliminaries were not needed
between him and Shanklin.

"You seem to be doin' the talkin'," returned Shanklin with a show of
cold indifference, although Slavens saw that he watched every movement
Boyle made, and more than once in those few seconds the doctor marked
Hun's sinewy right arm twitch as if on the point of making some swift
stroke.

Boyle stopped while there was yet a rod between them, so hot with anger
that his hands were trembling.

"That don't answer me!" he growled, his voice thick in his constricted
throat. "What have you got to say to the way you double-crossed me, you
old one-eyed hellion?"

"Talk don't hurt, Jerry, unless a man talks too much," Shanklin answered
mildly. "Now, if I wanted to talk, I could mighty near talk a rope
around your little white neck. I know when to talk and when to keep
still."

"And I know how to jar you loose!" threatened Boyle.

Shanklin leaned toward the Governor's son never so little, his left hand
lifted to point his utterance, and opened upon Boyle the most withering
stream of blasphemous profanity that Slavens had ever heard. If there
ever was a man who cursed by note, as they used to say, Hun Shanklin was
that one. He laid it to Boyle in a blue streak.

"What do I owe you?" he began.

Then he swung off into the most derogatory comparisons, applications,
insulting flagellations, that man ever stood up and listened to. His
evident motive was to provoke Boyle to some hostile act, so that
twitching right arm might have the excuse for dealing out the death
which lay at its finger-ends. Every little while the torrent of abuse
broke upon the demand, "What do I owe you?" like a rock in the channel,
and then rushed on again without laying hold of the same epithet twice.
If a man were looking for a master in that branch of frontier learning,
a great opportunity was at hand.

Boyle leaned against the torrent of abuse and swallowed it, his face
losing its fiery hue, blanching and fading as if every word fell on his
senses like the blow of a whip to th