g jaw of his captor fell from astonishment. "Who told you that?"

The prisoner helped himself to more bacon and laughed again. He had made
a guess, but he knew now that he had hit the bull's-eye with his shot in
the dark.

"Some things don't need telling. I don't have to be told, for instance,
that if things get too hot for Brill Healy he will slide out and leave
you to settle the bill with the law."

Irwin's eyes glared angrily at his smiling ones. The unabashed
impudence, the unfluttered aplomb, but above all the uncanny prescience
of this youth disturbed him because he could not understand them.
Moreover, it happened that his suspicious mind had lingered on the
chance of a betrayal at the hands of his chief. For which very reason he
broke into angry denial.

"That's a lie! Brill ain't that sort. He'd stand pat to a finish." Then,
tardily, came the instinct for caution. "And there's nothing to tell,
anyways," he finished sulkily.

"Sure. What's a little rustling and a little bank robbing among
friends?" Keller wanted to know cheerfully.

For just an instant he thought he had gone too far. The big ruffian
opposite choked over his biscuit, the while rage purpled his face. He
caught up the revolver, and his fingers itched at the trigger.

His prisoner, leaning back in the chair, held him with quiet, unwavering
eyes. "Steady! Steady!" he drawled.

"That will be about enough from you," Irwin let out through set teeth.
"You padlock that mouth of yours, mister."

Keller took his advice temporarily, but it was not in him to long
repress the spirit of adventure that bubbled in him. The temptation to
bait this bear drew him irresistibly. He could not let him alone, the
more that he sensed the danger to himself of the prods he sent home
through the thick skin.

Lying carelessly on the bed with his head on his arm, or perhaps sitting
astride a chair with his hands crossed on the back support, he would
smile with childlike innocence and sent his barbs in gayly. And Irwin,
murder in his dull brain, would glare at him like a maniac.

"Now would be a good time to blow off the top of my cocoanut," the
nester suggested more than once to the infuriated cave man. "I'm
allowing, you know, to send you to Yuma as soon as I get out of this.
Nothing like grabbing your opportunity by the forelock."

"And when are you expecting to get out of here?" his guard demanded
huskily.

Keller waved his hand with airy persiflage. "No exac