and pushed the rest back. "This is
mine," he said: "I'd ha' made about that on the lake, average luck. I
don't want to be beholden to you, nor you to me."

"As you please," answered Field, folding up the bills. He wrote on a
slip of paper, wrapped it round the roll and tied all with a bit of
string: "I'll keep this for you if you say so. When you want it, just
let me know. There is my number."

He twirled a card across the table, and it fell face down before Long.
He took it up without turning it over, tore it across and dropped it
on the floor.

"Stranger," he said, "you and me's quits. I don't know you and you
don't know me. But if I was a friend of yours, and advisin' you what
was best for you, I'd say to you, 'Go home.'" His skull-cap drawn
forward, and his face set and threatening, he leaned forward with his
powerful arms on the table and spoke in his usual low, unemphatic way,
and with his deliberate, huskily-musical voice. Field laughed: his
right arm was back upon the arm of his chair, and his fingers under
his coat played with something that clicked.

"Just so," Long went on, as if Field had spoken, perhaps a shade
darker in the face, but with the same even manner and voice. "Our
bears don't carry no coward's devil-fingers that kill by p'inting at
twenty foot, but they hev got teeth and claws."

Field started up and flushed like fire. "Did you say _coward_?" he
said. "By ----! that's more than I'll take from you!" And his voice
and his hand on the back of his chair shook a little as he spoke.

Long lay back in his chair, folded his arms and nodded: "You heard
what I said. Maybe it ain't York English, but it's such as we hev in
these parts."

Field stood a minute looking at him. Then he drew out a silver-mounted
revolver from his pocket and laid it on the table.

"There," he said, "I make you a present of it. Be careful: it is
loaded and cocked."

Long looked up with something like admiration in his face. He took the
pistol in his hand, went to the window and fired the six barrels, one
after the other. The landlord came in to see what it was.

"Mr. Wannock," said Long, "lockup this pistol till Mr. Meadow calls
for it."

"It is not mine," said Field: "I gave it to you, and you took it."

Long went out without a word.

Field did not go home. He was back and forth about the lakes, mostly
about the upper one, for a week or two after that. He turned up in all
sorts of places, fished in deep water an