Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/203

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you shot him on sight. But you can't touch him; he's never alone, not for a minute, except when he comes into this house. All feuds end at the door; he knows he's safe here."

"I saw him alone at Bonita one night. Well, Charley Thomson was with him."

"Where were they?"

"Just leaving Cattle Kate's hotel."

"Of course. And I'll bet anything Kate was hanging around behind him with a gun under her apron. She'd have killed you, or any man that made a break to pull a gun."

"Yes, she was right there," he admitted, not having counted that circumstance before." But I didn't want to go after him then; I was willing to let that little joke of his pass."

"And the minute he got from under Kate's eye, Glass or another one of the three that always hang around him, stepped in behind. You'd have seen if you'd watched."

"I didn't watch. But Glass was in town, I saw him in the dance hall."

"You'll always see one of them right at hand, Ed. Another man's been after him a long time, I know it as well as you do, no matter how I found it out. If he can't get him, how can you?"

"I might have him arrested, in spite of my promise to Senator Nearing that I wouldn't," Barrett suggested, speaking of that course as one mentions a contemptible thing.

"You know why he asked you not to interfere."