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Updated: May 17, 2025
"I reckon you're plum white!" he declared. "You ain't aimin' to see any free show." "I'm sayin' so-long to you," returned Ferguson. "You're game." A flash of admiration lighted his eyes. The clear-eyed man smiled enigmatically. "I'm stayin' game!" he declared grimly, without boast. "An' now I'm tellin' you somethin'. Yesterday Leviatt told me he'd shot Ben Radford.
And he drawled again, so that there was a distinct space between the words. "I reckon you didn't go around advertisin' that?" he asked. Stafford shook his head negatively. "There ain't anyone around here knowed anything about that but me an' you an' Leviatt," he returned. Ferguson grinned coldly. "An' yet it's got out," he stated quietly.
"Back at Dry Bottom," said Ferguson presently, "there was a man shootin' at a can when I struck town. He put five bullets through the can. Was that your range boss?" Stafford smiled. "That was Leviatt my range boss," he returned. "We went over to Dry Bottom to get a gunfighter. We wanted a man who could shoot plum quick. He'd have to be quick, for Radford's lightnin' with a six.
Ferguson strode into the manager's office and dropped heavily into a chair beside the desk. He was directly in front of the open door and looking up he could see the men down at the bunkhouse congregated around the bodies of Leviatt and Tucson. The end that he had been expecting for the past two days had come had come as he knew it must come. He had not been trapped as they had trapped Rope Jones.
She was not able to conceal her satisfaction over the discovery, and when she looked at Leviatt again she smiled broadly. "That confession explains a great many things," she said, stooping to recover the page that he had dropped beside her upon the rock. "Meanin' what?" he questioned, his eyes glittering evilly. "Meaning that I now know why you are not friendly toward Mr. Ferguson," she returned.
And yet these men had met but twice before. A man meets another in North America in the Antipodes. He looks upon him, meets his eye, and instantly has won a friend or made an enemy. Perhaps this will always be true of men. Certainly it was true of Ferguson and the range boss. What force was at work in Leviatt when in Dry Bottom he had insulted Ferguson?
But this knowledge had not disturbed him. He felt secure because of his position. Even the stray-man would have to have absolute, damning evidence before he could hope to be successful in proving a range boss guilty of cattle stealing. Leviatt had been more concerned over the stray-man's apparent success in courting Mary Radford.
"Mebbe you might think it's onusual for Stafford to hire a two-gun man to look after strays," broke in Leviatt at this point. "Two-gun men ain't takin' such jobs regular," he insinuated. "Stray-men is usual low-down, mean, ornery cusses which ain't much good for anything else, an' so they spend their time mopin' around, doin' work that ain't fit for any puncher to do."
"If you're lovin' him," he continued, leaning toward her, his muscles tense, his lips quivering with a passion that he was no longer able to repress, "I'm tellin' you that you're wastin' your time. You wouldn't think so much of him if you knowed that he come here " Leviatt had become aware that Miss Radford was not listening; that she was no longer looking at him, but at something behind him.
Rope had ridden into a carefully laid trap and, in spite of his reputation for quickness in drawing his weapon, had found that the old game of getting a man between two fires had proven efficacious. And now Leviatt and Tucson were to attempt the scheme again. Since his interview with Stafford, Leviatt had become convinced that the time for action had come.
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