Gray's brows lifted whimsically. "Of course. How should you know? There was a clumsy attempt to do me bodily harm, to--assassinate me. Funny, isn't it? So ill considered and so impracticable.--But about this Avenger matter, if you find it inconvenient to offset my wells as fast as I put them down, perhaps you'd consider selling--" "_Inconvenient?_" Nelson felt the blood rush to his face at this insufferable insult, but he calmed himself with the thought that his opponent was deliberately goading him. After all, it served him right for permitting the fellow to stop him. "Inconvenient! Ha!" He turned away carelessly. "No offense, my dear Colonel. I thought, after your Arkansas fiasco, you might wish--" "What Arkansas fiasco?" Nelson wheeled, and in spite of himself his voice cracked. "Ah! Another secret, eh?" Gray winked elaborately--nothing could have been more deliberately offensive than that counterfeit of a friendly understanding. "Very well, I sha'n't say a word." "You--" The banker was gasping. "You're doing your damnedest to--to start something, aren't you?" "Every day. Every hour. Every minute." The speaker bowed. "In defense of my promise to fight fair, let me assure you, however, that I did not start this. As a matter of fact, I knew nothing about it until you had been hooked. Apropos of that quixotic promise, please remember that your own actions have absolved me from it." The men stared at each other for a moment that seemed interminable. Gray was watchful, expectant; Nelson was plainly shaken by a desire so desperate that resistance left him weak. He was like an animal frozen in the very attitude of springing. "Foxy, aren't you?" he managed to say, at last. "Tempting me to--make the first move." With a mighty effort of will he forced his tense body to relax. "The act of a bully! Bah! Wouldn't I be a fool--" "A bully is usually a coward," Gray said, slowly. "Neither of us is a coward. I'm not ready to--join the issue that way, especially in a place like this. The game is too exciting to--" "You'll get all the excitement you're looking for," Nelson cried, wrathfully. "You've cost me a lot of money, but you could have cost me a lot more if you hadn't been fool enough to brag about it and give me warning. Now--I'll send you out of Texas afoot." "On my back, perhaps, but never on my feet." Without another word the banker passed on, but he went blindly, for his mind was in black chaos. No chance now for secrecy; he was in for a bit of hell. He managed to kill the story in the local papers, but it appeared in the Dallas journals, which was even worse, and for the first time in his life he found himself an object of ridicule. The Arkansas transaction was made to appear the most outrageous swindle of recent oil history, and, coming so quickly after the Jackson exposure, it excited double interest and amusement.