The effect was slight, but it startled Kirby.  For just an instant the Dry Valley farmer’s eyes told the truth—­shouted it as plainly as words could have done.  He had expected that answer from Hull.  He had expected it because he, too, had reason to believe it the truth.  Then the lids narrowed, and the man’s lip lifted in a sneer of rejection.  He was covering up.

“Pretty near up to you to find some one else to pass the buck to, ain’t it?” he taunted.

“Suppose you tell us the whole story, Hull,” the Wyoming man said.

The fat man had one last flare of resistance.  “Olson here says he seen me crack Cunningham with the butt of my gun.  How did he see me?  Where does he claim he was when he seen it?”

“I was standin’ on the fire escape of the Wyndham across the alley—­about ten or fifteen feet away.  I heard every word that was said by Cunningham an’ yore wife.  Oh, I’ve got you good.”

Hull threw up the sponge.  He was caught and realized it.  His only chance now was to make a clean breast of what he knew.

“Where shall I begin?” he asked weakly, his voice quavering.

“At the beginning.  We’ve got plenty of time,” Kirby replied.

“Well, you know how yore uncle beat me in that Dry Valley scheme of his.  First place, I didn’t know he couldn’t get water enough.  If he give the farmers a crooked deal, I hadn’t a thing to do with that.  When I talked up the idea to them I was actin’ in good faith.”

“Lie number one,” interrupted Olson bitterly.

“Hadn’t we better let him tell his story in his own way?” Kirby suggested.  “If we don’t start any arguments he ain’t so liable to get mixed up in his facts.”

“By my way of figurin’ he owed me about four to six thousand dollars he wouldn’t pay,” Hull went on.  “I tried to get him to see it right, thinkin’ at first he was just bull-headed.  But pretty soon I got wise to it that he plain intended to do me.  O’ course I wasn’t goin’ to stand for that, an’ I told him so.”

“What do you mean when you say you weren’t goin’ to stand for it.  My uncle told a witness that you said you’d give him two days, then you’d come at him with a gun.”

The fat man mopped a perspiring face with his bandanna.  His eyes dodged.  “Maybe I told him so.  I don’t recollect.  When he’s sore a fellow talks a heap o’ foolishness.  I wasn’t lookin’ for trouble, though.”

“Not even after he threw you downstairs?”

“No, sir.  He didn’t exactly throw me down.  I kinda slipped.  If I’d been expectin’ trouble would I have let Mrs. Hull go up to his rooms with me?”

Kirby had his own view on that point, but he did not express it.  He rather thought that Mrs. Hull had driven her husband upstairs and had gone along to see that he stood to his guns.  Once in the presence of Cunningham, she had taken the bit in her own teeth, driven to it by temper.  This was his guess.  He knew he might be wrong.