“Look at Beck!” he jeered. “Guess what he knows I think of ’im! And I know him--he’s me pardner! Fish mouth and mackerel eye---- Yah! And all three of you knuckle down to Baca! Year after year you let yourselves be bullyragged, browbeaten, lorded over by a jury-packing, witness-bribing shyster--a grafter, a crook, a dirty Mexican----” Without hesitation or change of countenance Baca walked across the open space toward him. “Not one step more!” said Scanlon. Baca stopped in his tracks. “You nervy little runt,” he said, half in admiration, “you mean it! Well, I mean this, too. If I’m a crook--and there is much in favor of that contention--it is because my personal inclination lies that way, and not in the least because of my Mexican blood. I am quite clear on that point. Leave out the part about the dirty Mexican and I don’t take that other step. Otherwise, I step! Choose!” “I withdraw the Mexican!” said Scanlon ungrudgingly. “Dod! I believe you’re the best of the rotten bunch!” “Go on, then: ‘Grafter, crook’----” prompted Baca. “Why--er--really!” stammered Scanlon. Then he brightened. “‘There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said,’” he beamed, canting his head on one side with a flat, oily smile, “‘that I will not further detain you.’” He seated himself, with a toothy, self-satisfied expression; but the allusion was lost on all except the delighted Baca. In glum silence, Quinliven reached for a bottle and glared at the little Irishman, who smiled evilly back at him. “There is one more point,” observed Baca in his best courtroom manner, “on which I touch with a certain delicacy and, as it were, with hesitation. I am reluctant to grieve further a spirit already distressed; but the fact is, gentlemen, our impulsive friend here”--he laid a gentle hand on Bennett’s shoulder and Bennett squeaked--“undertook yesterday to employ this man Jones--Neighbor Jones--to murder our friend Drake. I take this most unkindly.” He teetered on his tiptoes; he twirled his eyeglasses; his hand made a pleasant jingle with key ring and coin; his face expressed a keen sense of well-being and social benevolence. “As a matter of abstract principle, even before we had learned to love our young friend Drake, we decided that such a step was unnecessary and inexpedient; and so informed Mr. Bennett. But the idea of slaying Mr. Drake seems to have become an obsession with Mr. Bennett--or, as English Ben would put it, a fad. As English Ben would say, again, Mr. Bennett is a beastly blighter.” He adjusted the eyeglasses and beamed round on his cowed and sullen confederates, goaded, for his delight, to madness and desperation; and on the one uncowed co-devil, the mordant and cynical Scanlon.