“Perhaps it is some other Beaudry.”

“Take another guess,” retorted the cripple scornfully.  “Right off when I clapped eyes on him, I knew he reminded me of somebody.  I know now who it was.”

“But what’s he doing up here?” asked the big man.

The hawk eyes of Tighe glittered.  “What do you reckon the son of John Beaudry would be doing here?” He answered his own question with bitter animosity.  “He’s gathering evidence to send Hal Rutherford and Jess Tighe to the penitentiary.  That’s what he’s doing.”

Rutherford nodded.  “Sure.  What else would he be doing if he is a chip of the old block?  That’s where his father’s son ought to put us if he can.”

Tighe beat his fist on the table, his face a map of appalling fury and hate.  “Let him go to it, then.  I’ve been a cripple seventeen years because Beaudry shot me up.  By God!  I’ll gun his son inside of twenty-four hours.  I’ll stomp him off’n the map like he was a rattlesnake.”

“No,” vetoed Rutherford curtly.

“What!  What’s that you say?” snarled the other.

“I say he’ll get a run for his money.  If there’s any killing to be done, it will be in fair fight.”

“What’s ailing you?” sneered Tighe.  “Getting soft in your upper story?  Mean to lie down and let that kid run you through to the pen like his father did Dan Meldrum?”

“Not in a thousand years,” came back Rutherford.  “If he wants war, he gets it.  But I’ll not stand for any killing from ambush, and no killing of any kind unless it has to be.  Understand?”

“That sounds to me,” purred the smaller man in the Western slang that phrased incredulity.  Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth.  “Keep out of this if you’re squeamish.  Let me play out the hand.  I’ll bump him off pronto.”

“No, Jess.”

“What do you think I am?” screamed Tighe.  “Seventeen years I’ve been hog-tied to this house because of Beaudry.  Think I’m going to miss my chance now?  If he was Moody and Sankey rolled into one, I’d go through with it.  And what is he—­a spy come up here to gather evidence against you and me!  Didn’t he creep into your house so as to sell you out when he got the goods?  Hasn’t he lied from start to finish?”

“Maybe so.  But he has no proof against us yet.  We’ll kick him out of the park.  I’m not going to have his blood on my conscience.  That’s flat, Jess.”

The eyes in the bloodless face of the other man glittered, but he put a curb on his passion.  “What about me, Hal?  I’ve waited half a lifetime and now my chance has come.  Have you forgot who made me the misshaped thing I am?  I haven’t.  I’ll go through hell to fix Beaudry’s cub the way he did me.”  His voice shook from the bitter intensity of his feeling.

Rutherford paced up and down the room in a stress of sentiency.  “No, Jess.  I know just how you feel, but I’m going to give this kid his chance.  We gunned Beaudry because he wouldn’t let us alone.  Either he or a lot of us had to go.  But I’ll say this.  I never was satisfied with the way we did it.  When Jack Beaudry shot you up, he was fighting for his life.  We attacked him.  You got no right to hold it against his son.”