a good word for
you."

Davis threw at him a look that drenched like ice water. "I expect you and
me are traveling different trails these days, Curly. You don't mean it of
course, but the point is I'm not going to joke with you along that line.
Understand?"

"Wrong guess, old hoss. I do mean it."

Davis stopped in his tracks. "Then you've said too much to me. We'll part
right here."

"It takes two to agree to that, Slats."

"That's where you're wrong. One is enough. We used to be good friends, but
those days are past. None of us can keep a man from being a durned fool if
he wants to be one. Nor a scoundrel. You've got the bit in your teeth and
I reckon you'll go till there is a smash. But you better understand this.
When you choose Soapy Stone's, crowd to run with that cuts out me and
other decent folks. If they have sent you here to get me mixed up in their
deviltry you go back and tell them there's nothing doing."

"Won't have a thing to do with them. Is that it?"

"Not till the call comes for citizens to get together and run them out of
the country. Or to put them behind bars. Or to string them to a
cottonwood. Then I'll be on the job."

He stood there quiet and easy, the look in his steady eyes piercing
Curly's ironic smile as a summer sun does mackerel clouds in a clear sky.
Not many men would have had the courage to send that message to Soapy and
his outfit. For Stone was not only a man killer, but a mean one at that.
Since he had come back from the penitentiary he had been lying pretty low,
but he brought down from the old days a record that chilled the blood.

Curly sloughed his foolishness and came to the point.

"You're on, Slats. I'm making that call to you now."

The eyes of the two men fastened. Those of Flandrau had quit dancing and
were steady as the sun in a blue sky. Surprise, doubt, wonder, relief
filled in turn the face of the other man.

"I'm listening, Curly."

His friend told him the whole story from the beginning, just as he had
been used to do in the old days. And Davis heard it without a word, taking
the tale in quietly with a grim look settling, on his face.

"So he aims to play traitor to young Cullison. The thing is damnable."

"He means to shut Sam's mouth for good and all. That is what he has been
playing for from the start, to get even with Luck. He and his gang will
get away with the haul and they will leave Sam dead on the scene of the
hold-up. There will be some shootin