“Delighted to see me, aren’t you?” he remarked.  A slow anger surged up within him.  “Your little scheme didn’t work, did it?  Wanted me out of the way, did you?  Thought you’d keep me out of court!  Well, I’m here, just as I said I’d be here.  You can pay your villainous tool or kick him out, as you please.  He’s failed, and he won’t get another chance.  You miserable whelp!”

But Oldham had recovered his poise.

“Get out of my way.  I don’t know what you are talking about.  I’ll land you in the penitentiary a week after you appear in court.  You’re warned.”

“Oh, I’ve been warned for some time.  But first I’ll land you.”

“Really!  How?”

“Right here and now,” said Bob stepping forward.

Oldham reined back his horse, and drew from his side pocket a short, nickel-plated revolver.

“Let me pass!” he commanded harshly.  He presented the weapon, and his gray eyes contracted to pin points.

“Throw that thing away,” said Bob, laying his hand on the other man’s bridle. “I’m going to give you the very worst licking you ever heard tell of!”

The young man’s muscles were tense with the expectation of a shot.  To his vast astonishment, at his last words Oldham turned deadly pale, swayed in the saddle, and the revolver clattered past his stirrup to fall in the dust.  With a snarl of contempt at what he erroneously took for a mere physical cowardice, Bob reached for his enemy and dragged him from the saddle.

The chastisement was brief, but effective.  Bob’s anger cooled with the first blow, for Oldham was no match for his younger and more vigorous assailant.  In fact, he hardly offered any resistance.  Bob knocked him down, shook him by the collar as a terrier shakes a ground squirrel, and cast him fiercely in the dust.  Oldham sat up, his face bleeding slightly, his eyes bewildered with the suddenness of the onslaught.  The young man leaned over him, speaking vehemently to rivet his attention.

“Now you listen to me,” said he.  “You leave me alone.  If I ever hear any gossip, even, about what you will or will not do to me, I’ll know where it started from.  The first word I hear from any one anywhere, I’ll start for you.”

He looked down for a moment at the disorganized man seated in the thick, white dust that was still floating lazily around him.  Then he turned abruptly away and resumed his journey.

XXX

For ten seconds Oldham sat as Bob had left him.  His hat and eyeglasses were gone, his usually immaculate irongray hair rumpled, his clothes covered with dust.  A thin stream of blood crept from beneath his close-clipped moustache.  But the most striking result of the encounter, to one who had known the man, was in the convulsed expression of his countenance.  A close friend would hardly have recognized him.  His lips snarled, his eyes flared, the muscles of his face worked.