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It might have gone hahd with me, if I hadn't mahked the othah cahds too with thumb-nail scratches!" "Yuh admit yuh marked them cards?" yelled Blacksnake in fury. "What about it, men? He's a cheat and ought to be strung up!" Most of the onlookers were doing their best to conceal grins, and even Blacksnake's sympathizers made no move to do anything.
The fighting fever was in their veins, especially since the death of poor Mike Train. And now, with Blacksnake and half the outlaw gang captured, they felt that they had a good part of the battle won. Red tried to question Blacksnake about his brother's death, but the outlaw was stubborn and refused to talk.
He was in such a hurry to get away from that neighborhood that he forgot to ask Jimmy Skunk just where he had seen Mr. Blacksnake. He hardly waited long enough to say good-by to Jimmy Skunk, but started off as fast as he could go. Now it just happened that Old Mr. Toad started up the Crooked Little Path, and it just happened that Mr. Blacksnake was coming down the Crooked Little Path.
His draw had been so swift that nobody had caught the elusive movement. "This game is bein' played with cahds, even if they are crooked cahds, and not guns, sah!" "Crooked!" breathed Blacksnake. "Are yuh hintin' that I'm a crook?" "I'm not hintin'," said The Kid, with a flashing smile. "I'm sayin' it right out. The aces in that deck were marked in the cornahs with thumb-nail scratches.
"I'd expostulate with a blacksnake," growled the fiery Terry. A number waited on King. Keith was among them. They found his office in a small ramshackle frame building, situated in the middle instead of alongside one of the back streets. It had probably been one of the early small dwelling-houses, marooned by a resurvey of the streets, and never since moved.
Blacksnake is his chief gunman, actin' by Gentleman John's ordahs." "Where's the other men the two riders on duty with Joe?" Lefty Warren wanted to know. It did not take much of a search to find them. One had fallen near the little corral, shot through the heart. The other lay a few hundred yards away, at the river bank. He, too, was dead. "Mo' murdah," snapped the Texan grimly.
For in order to draw the gun that swung at his hip, Blacksnake would first have to drop his implement of torture. "Heah's wheah yo' get it!" snapped The Kid crisply. Blacksnake's eyes bulged with sudden, startled terror, for he had a glimpse of the shining blade for one brief instant. His whip hand moved toward the butt of his gun. But he was too late.
"We got enough!" they yelped. "Don't shoot!" Kid Wolf lashed out at Blacksnake, who was rushing him again. The short, powerful blow to the jaw sent the leader down for good. He rolled over, stunned. "Bueno." The Texan smiled. "Keep yo' hands right theah, please, caballeros." Before the powder fumes had cleared away, he had liberated Lefty and Red with quick strokes of his bowie.
While the lengthwise-striped snakes are harmless, others not striped in this way are harmless, too. The blacksnake, though he looks an ugly customer and, when cornered, will sometimes show fight, is not venomous and his bite is not deep. It is, therefore, wanton cruelty to kill every snake that crosses your path simply because it happens to be a snake.
It was just while he was thus telling the tale for the twentieth time that two figures appeared over the brow of the hill and drew near Hence Sturgill on horseback and Tallow Dick on foot. "I ketched this nigger in my corn-fiel' this mornin'," said Hence, simply, and Flitter Bill glared, and without a word went for the blacksnake ox-whip that hung by the barn door.
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