Part 43 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVIII
RUNNION FINDS THE SINGING PEOPLE
”No Creek” Lee ca, and found Gale attending store as if nothing unusual had occurred
”Say! What's this about you and Stark? I hear you had a horrible run-in, and that you split him up the back like a quail”
”We had a row,” ad out, and last night it came to a head”
”Lord-ee! And to think of Ben Stark's bein' licked! Why, the whole camp's talkin' about it! They say he emptied two six-shooters at you, but you kept a-coet to him you just carved your initials on hioner, sure”
”Do you et well, froh he won't let nobody come near him except old Doc; but he's lost a battle, and that ends him Don't you savvy? Whenever a killer quits second best, it breaks his hoodoo Why, there's beenfor him these twenty years, from here to the Rio Grande, and every feller he ever bested will hear of this and begin to grease his holster; then the first shave-tail desperado that meets him will spit in his eye, just to make a naot to fight all his battles over again, and this time the other feller will open the ball Oh, I've seen it happen before You killed hi up his hide to dry, and he knows it”
”I'm a peaceable man,” said Gale, on the defensive ”I had to do it”
”I know! I know! There itnesses--this dress-maker at the fort seen it, so I hear”
The other acquiesced silently
”Well! Well! Ben Stark licked! I can't get over that Itto make you do it, John” It was as close to a question as the h he was avid with curiosity, and, like the entire toas in a fret to knohat lay back of this erated rurotesque and ridiculous the longer the truth remained hidden, for Stark could not be seen, and neither Gale nor Burrell would speak All that the people kneas that one lay wounded to death behind the duht him down When the old man vouchsafed no more than a nod to his question, the prospector inquired:
”Where's Poleon? I've got news for hione”
”Back soon?”
”I don't know Why?”
”His layround and the pay ain't there, so they've quit work for good”
”He drew a blank, eh?”
”Worse'n that--three of them The creek is spotteder than a leopard