“If you throw for the body instead of the head,” said Donnegan, “you have a better chance of sending the point home.”

He turned his back again upon the gaping giant, and drawing up a broken box before the open door he sat down to contemplate the night.  Not a sound behind him.  It might be that the big fellow had regained his nerve and was stealing up for a second attempt; but Donnegan would have wagered his soul that George Washington Green had his first and last lesson and that he would rather play with bare lightning than ever again cross his new master.

At length:  “When you make down the bunks,” said Donnegan, “put mine farthest from the kitchen.  You had better do that first.”

“Yes—­sir,” came the deep bass murmur behind him.

And the heart of Donnegan stirred, for that “sir” meant many things.

Presently George crossed the floor with a burden; there was the “whish” of the blankets being unrolled—­and then a slight pause.  It seemed to him that he could hear a heavier breathing.  Why?  And searching swiftly back through his memory he recalled that his other gun, a stub-nosed thirty-eight, was in the center of his blanket roll.

And he knew that George had the weapon in his big hand.  One pressure of the trigger would put an end to Donnegan; one bullet would give George the canvas sack and its small treasure.

“When you clean my gun,” said Donnegan, “take the action to pieces and go over every part.”

He could actually feel the start of George.

Then:  “Yes, sir,” in a subdued whisper.

If the escape from the knife had startled George, this second incident had convinced him that his new master possessed eyes in the back of his head.

And Donnegan, paying no further heed to him, looked steadily across the hillside to the white tent of Lou Macon, fifty yards away.

16

His plan, grown to full stature so swiftly, and springing out of nothing, well nigh, had come out of his first determination to bring Jack Landis back to Lou Macon; for he could interpret those blank, misty eyes with which she had sat after the departure of Landis in only one way.  Yet to rule even the hand of big Jack Landis would be hard enough and to rule his heart was quite another story.  Remembering Nelly Lebrun, he saw clearly that the only way in which he could be brought back to Lou was first to remove Nelly as a possibility in his eyes.  But how remove Nelly as long as it was her cue from her father to play Landis for his money?  How remove her, unless it were possible to sweep Nelly off her feet with another man?  She might, indeed, be taken by storm, and if she once slighted Landis for the sake of another, his boyish pride would probably do the rest, and his next step would be to return to Lou Macon.