k like you've been
run over by a wagon, or kicked by an army mule. Great heavens, man!"
Welborne put out his hand as if to touch the purple and swollen spot
above Bradley's eye, but with a surly oath the young man drew back.

"Same mule, I reckon, that had hold of your windpipe in your office the
other day when you squealed like a stuck pig under the table."

"Huh!" Welborne grunted. "You was in the other room and didn't show
yourself when a man less 'n half my age and as strong as an ox
was--was--"

"T'wasn't my row, and this ain't _yours_," Hank growled. "I'll tell you
that now, and be done with it. I won't take up any fight of yours over
your close-fisted, hold-up deals, but I'll see mine through, and don't
you forget it."

"You'd better go in the house and put some medicine on your face," the
old man advised, "and sleep off that drunk! I smelt you before you
opened the gate. I knew when you was kicked out of Alf Henley's store
that day that you'd never let it rest till you had another row. You are
like your daddy was, always looking for trouble, and, somehow, always
finding plenty of it, and doing no particular harm to anybody else. He
was always going to kill somebody, but never got to it."

"Listen to me," Bradley snarled; "if I don't kill that dirty whelp in
twenty-four hours from now, I leave home for good and all."

"Say, look here," Welborne said, with a change of tone. "I'm not saying
this for Alf Henley's sake, for I hate him; he is the only man in this
county that ever tricked me out of my rights, and I'll get even with
'im, sooner or later, but I'm thinking now about you. You may be
foolhardy enough to try some slip-up game on him. I'm not afraid you'll
meet him like a man, for, if it had been in you, you'd have done it
before this, but you may think you can do your job in the dark, so
listen to me, Hank. You may think you can shoot him from behind, but I
tell you if you do you'll swing for it. I've got a longer head than you
have, because I've kept it clear, and hate of a man never will get my
neck in the loop. Don't you know--can't you see that if anything harmed
that fellow now, after this whipping he's given you, that suspicion
would be directed to you. He's popular--men on all sides like him--and a
jury would not leave their seats to convict you. You'd hang, I tell you,
hang till you are dead, dead, dead!"

"I'd rather hang, by God," Bradley growled, "than go through with what
I'm going throug