"I suppose you
heard about what happened to the chap you beat up at Morgan's place
the other day?"
"Who knows that _I_ beat him up?" asked Silent sharply.
"Nobody," said Jordan, "but when I heard the description of the man
that hit Whistling Dan with the chair, I knew it was Jim Silent."
"What about Barry?" asked Haines, but Jordan still kept his eyes upon
the chief.
"They was sayin' pretty general," he went on, "that you _needed_ that
chair, Jim. Is that right?"
The other three glanced covertly to each other. Silent's hand bunched
into a great fist.
"He went loco. I had to slam him. Was he hurt bad?"
"The cut on his head wasn't much, but he was left lyin' in the saloon
that night, an' the next mornin' old Joe Cumberland, not knowin' that
Whistlin' Dan was in there, come down an' touched a match to the old
joint. She went up in smoke an' took Dan along."
No one spoke for a moment. Then Silent cried out: "Then what was that
whistlin' I've heard down the road behind us?"
Bill Kilduff broke into rolling bass laughter, and Hal Purvis chimed
in with a squeaking tenor.
"We told you all along, Jim," said Purvis, as soon as he could control
his voice, "that there wasn't any whistlin' behind us.
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