Two-Spot stared at him and tried to moisten his throat. "Where was you?" snapped Wolf, venomously. "Talk fast!" "I don't remember," answered Two-Spot. "You was in yore hang-out under this floor," accused Wolf. "Did you see me?" "It was too dark," answered the tramp, flashing an appealing look at Dave, whose face was growing red again. "Not with th' light streamin' out of them side windows! Who did you tell?" "I didn't see you." "Who did you tell? Th' Double X?" "No; it was too dark." Warned by a premonition of impending disaster, and feeling that they were unawed, and restrained only by reason, Wolf ordered the three armed men to turn their backs to him, which they did with a slowness which in itself was an insult. He took the guns of Dailey and Fanning and ordered Dave to come out and join them. Dave took time enough to keep his dignity unsmirched. Free from the necessity of keeping a high-tension vigilance, Wolf walked up to Two-Spot and struck him on the face with the heel of his hand. "Did you tell th' Double X?" he demanded. "D--n you, answer me!" "No," whispered Two-Spot, and in his bleared eyes there smouldered the sparks of a fire long dormant. "Did you tell Nelson? Quick!" Dailey and Fanning hung on the slow answer, for they remembered that little incident with startling clearness. "No!" snarled Two-Spot. Wolf kicked him on the shins and, dropping one gun into its sheath, grabbed the skinny throat, gripping it cruelly. "Who did you tell?" he growled, shaking his victim, and quivering with rage at such resistance where he had expected to encounter none. Some ghost of a former stalwart courage, shaken awake by desperation and rage, came back to its forsaken habitation and spoke through a mouthpiece for too long a stranger to it. Two-Spot tried to speak and Wolf, a gleam of triumph burning through the madness in his eyes, loosened his grip and stepped back. The voice which answered him was not Two-Spot's, although it came through his lips. It was level, cold, self-possessed, and biting. "You ask somebody who's a-scared of you, you three-card flush. An' keep yore paws off'n me--they stink of hides an' maggots." The crashing roar sounded like a thunderbolt and the acrid cloud of smoke swept forward and shrouded the falling man. Wolf leaped back, out of it, and stopped the instinctive advance of the horrified and enraged onlookers, who had turned at the shot, his two guns barely sufficient for the task. Dave's expression took his instant attention and he snapped a warning, venomous as the jet from a copperhead's fangs: "Don't you try it, Green!" He flashed a look at the other two, and nearly fired in instinctive answer to the malevolent looks in their eyes.