easy
confidence to the blue-eyed man with the weather-split lip. "Williams
Cache, wasn't it? All right, we're placed. Now what have you got in
for me?"

"I've got forty head of steers in for you," answered the man in the
middle, with a splitting oath. "You stole forty head of my steers in
that round-up, and I'm going to fill you so full of lead you'll never
run off no more stock for nobody. Don't look over there to your horse
or your rifle. Hold your hands right where they are."

"Certainly, certainly!"

"When I pull, I shoot!"

"I don't always do it, but it is business, I acknowledge. When a man
pulls he ought to shoot--very often it's the only chance he ever gets
to shoot. Well, it isn't every man gets the drop on me that easy, but
you boys have got it," continued Whispering Smith in frank admiration.
"Only I want to say you're after the wrong man. That round-up was all
Rebstock's fault, and Rebstock is bound to make good all loss and
damage."

"You'll make good my share of it right now and here," said the man
with the wash-blue eyes.

"Why, of course," assented Whispering Smith, "if I must, I must. I
suppose I may light a cigarette, boys, before you turn loose the
fireworks?"

"Light it quick!"

Laughing at the humor of the situation, Whispering Smith, his eyes
beaming with good-nature, put the finger and thumb of his right hand
into his waistcoat pocket, drew out a package of cigarette paper, and,
bantering his captors innocently the while, tore out a sheet and put
the packet back. Folding the paper in his two hands, he declared he
believed his tobacco was in his saddle-pocket, and asked leave to step
across the street to get it. The trick was too transparent, and leave
was refused with scorn and some hard words. Whispering Smith begged
the men in front of him in turn for tobacco. They cursed him and shook
their heads.

For an instant he looked troubled. Still appealing to them with his
eyes, he tapped lightly the lower outside pockets of his coat with his
fingers, shifting the cigarette paper from hand to hand as he hunted.
The outside pockets seemed empty. But as he tapped the inside breast
pocket on the left side of the coat--the three men, lynx-eyed,
watching--his face brightened. "Stop!" said he, his voice sinking to a
relieved whisper as his hand rested lightly on the treasure. "There's
the tobacco. I suppose one of you will give me a match?"

All that the three before him could ever afterward r