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As the missus says, them freezers is always the worst when they thaws." "Seems to me," Cullen observed solemnly "seems to me the drought ain't the only trouble in the district; and old Cold-blood, coming here listening to all we've got to say, has got in ahead of us somehow, and is playing a lone hand for all he's worth. He's bluffed Murray." "Wha-at?" Marmot exclaimed. "For why not?"
"You'll have to tell her or I shall." "She's only cranky," Dickson answered in the same tone. "She's dotty half her time and scotty the other." The Three-mile, where Slaughter lived Cold-blood Slaughter, as they termed him, from his pessimistic, cynical manner of thought and speech was an out-of-the-way spot even for the district of Birralong.
"But it was not always me that had her. One day I saw a cold-blood give her a fall you'd think would smash the tiny little thing into bran; landed so low on a ditch bank he couldn't gather, and up over his head she flew and on till I thought she was for takin' the next wall by her lonesome.
Leastwise, unless he wants to go in for bad-man methods and do a little ambusheein' on his own account. The point is, that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable proposition, and plain, cold-blood murderers, willin' to wait for a sure thing, and without no compunctions whatsoever.
But that was only half of the matter. "He must have had a reason," she argued harshly. "Yes; one doesn't ride over a man in cold-blood for nothing. I think he had some cause for being afraid of Lisle; several things I remember now point to it. His chance came suddenly nobody could have arranged it he only remembered that Lisle with his brains crushed out could do him no harm."
Fall the best must, one day or another; but while the thoroughbred goes down fightin', strugglin' for his feet and ginerally either winnin' out or givin' his rider time to fall free if down he must go, the cold-blood falls loose and flabby as an empty sack, and he and his rider hit the ground like the divil had kicked them off Durham Terrace.
As you say, a man may make a bad break and pull up again, but this one has had his chance and has gone in deeper. What he's doing now helping to ruin that lad in cold-blood is almost worse than the other offense." Nasmyth made an acquiescent gesture. "It's true; let it go at that. I don't see how the thing can be stopped. There's a fish rising in the slack yonder!"
A ruptured blood-vessel certainly assisted in the collapse of Godson, but it was not even that which so astounded Birralong. The sick man, knowing himself to be at death's door, had called for one thing, pleaded for one thing, prayed for one thing, and that the presence of Cold-blood Slaughter.
He paused uneasily, half hoping she would move or speak; but only the sound of a choked sob came to him, and he shivered. It was the moment when the curious crowd outside glanced into the silent room. "Cold-blood Slaughter they calls me, miss," he went on presently, "for they say I ain't a feeling man; but it's only a name, miss.
"Godson's dead," he said. "And buried," Smart added, with pardonable pride, for he was the local undertaker as well as saw-miller. Tony, sitting on the tobacco-box, gazed at them open-mouthed. "It was sudden it's curled Cold-blood Slaughter clean up," Cullen put in as further explanation. "And Yaller-head she's gone to Barellan," another man, wishing to have some share in the proceedings, put in.
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