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Honeycutt hastily set his gun down, leaning it against the wall with both hammers still back, and shambled to the table. He caught the box up and hugged it to his thin old breast, breathing hard. "If there's money in it " said King, knowing well that the old miser had money secreted somewhere. "Who said there was money? Who said so?"
"He was too po'ly but thar's more Hawns and Honeycutts in town than you kin shake a stick at, an' they're walkin' round hyeh jes like brothers. Hello, hyeh's one now!" Jason turned to see big Babe Honeycutt, who, seeing him, paled a little, smiled sheepishly, and, without speaking, moved uneasily away. Whereat Steve laughed.
"Shet up!" she cried, and the lips of the routed boy fell apart in sheer amazement, for never before had she made the slightest question of his tyrannical authority, and then her eyes blazed at the big Honeycutt and she stamped her foot. "I'd give 'em to the meanest dog in these mountains." The big man turned to the boy. "Is he dead yit?" "No, he ain't dead yit," said the boy roughly.
But old Honeycutt, sucking and mouthing, shook his head. "I couldn't leave here, an' you know it. I I got things here," he said with a look of great cunning, "I wouldn't go away from. Not if horses was pullin' me." "You can bring those things along " Honeycutt cried out sharply at that. "You know I wouldn't durst!
I have offered to pay you three thousand dollars for what you know and there is the very strong likelihood that you don't know a bit more than I do " "Don't know!" shrieked Honeycutt. "Wasn't I a boy grown when the dyin', delerious man stumbled in on the camp? Didn't I hear him talk an' didn't I see what he had in his fist? Wasn't I settin' right side by side with Gus Ingle when that happened?
To catch an interest which he knew was always readily awakened, he said: "Brodie and Parker were on Lookout Ridge day before yesterday. Brodie shoved Parker over. At Lookout Ridge, Honeycutt." He stressed the words significantly while keenly watching for the gleam of interest in the faded eyes. It came; Honeycutt jerked his head up. "I wish I'd of shot him," he wailed.
His thoughts all of a sudden were restive, flying off to Swen Brodie, to Loony Honeycutt, to what he must get done without too much delay. Gratton startled him by speaking, bringing his thoughts back from across the ridges to the sunny verandah overlooking Lake Gloria. Gratton was nobody's fool, save his own, and both marked and resented King's attitude.
"He's just gittin' ready fer the man who shot his daddy." "Well, who the hell WAS the feller?" The other man laughed, lowered his voice, and the heart of the listening lad thumped painfully against the bowlder under him. "Well, I hain't nuver told hit afore, but I seed with my own eyes a feller sneakin' outen the bushes ten minutes atter the shot was fired, an' hit was Babe Honeycutt."
The last one of the Seven got it. Look how it happens with old man Loony Honeycutt, clucking and chuckling and stepping up and down in his shadow all the time; gone nuts from just smelling of it! Look what happens to me, all stove up here." He paused and then spat out venomously: "Oh, it'll get Swen Brodie and it'll get you, too, Mark King. You'll see." "Another drink before I go?" demanded King.
And I'll go bond he's giving Honeycutt the best, most nourishing meals that have come his way since his mother suckled him Swen Brodie bound on keeping him alive until he gets what he's after. When he'd kick old Honeycutt in the side and leave him to die like a dog with a broken back." "Well," demanded Gaynor, "what's to be done?
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