PAINTED ROCK
wouldn't shoot him at sight and without a word, and yet I feared that if he spoke Briggs would get his work in first.
There was some stress in waiting, and my nerves set themselves like strained wire. It was odd to hear the three men I didn't know gassing away to themselves, quite unconscious that lead might be flying in a moment. They turned and saw Briggs coming.
"That's a daisy of a horse the old chap's got," said one. I noted that one man said "cayuse," and I thereby judged he'd been in British Columbia.
I saw Briggs now plainly. He looked as if he was one of those hard old-timers who can stand up to a bar and keep a bar-tender busy. He had a red face and a hard eye touched with blood. It is wonderful how these drinkers can last, nerve and all, if they live on horse-back all the time they are not soaking. He looked by no means the man to scare. I owned that, and then all of a sudden I knew he would be scared. I laughed, and Tom turned. There was a look in his eye such as might have been in Jack's when he saw that
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