Robin gasped. His first impulse was to spur his horse after Shining Mark. No man could take that. Those were fighting words. Yet Steele wasn’t making a war talk or he would have shouted so that every man could hear and there would have been no avoiding the issue. Robin’s brain worked fast. He knew that Steele was quite calm and collected. What he said he said deliberately, with a considered purpose. “You’re lookin’ for trouble,” Robin said thoughtfully. “But you aim to make _me_ start it. I _sabe_ your play. You’ll have to try again. I won’t give you no openin’.” Twice in the next three days Steele dug into Robin. Each time they were out of earshot of any rider. Each time Shining Mark flayed him with insult, with provocative abuse. The second time Robin said quietly: “You’re wastin’ ammunition, Mark. You can’t kill me with a blank cartridge. Why don’t you make these fighting talks before the outfit?” Shining Mark looked him coldly in the eye. “Maybe I will,” said he. “What’ll you do then?” “Whatever I do everybody’ll know you got it in for me and forced the play,” Robin told him. “You’ll never start me smokin’ you up by whispering nasty remarks in my ear. I don’t give a damn what you say to me under your breath. _Sabe?_” Steele sidled his horse up close beside Robin. He leaned forward. “You’re yellow,” he said, with a sneer. “Yellow clear through. You know you are. I can take your girl away from you, spit in your face, and you’re afraid to make a break. When I get through with you a sheep herder could make you step sideways every time he blatted at you. I’ll make you jump at your own shadow.” “I wouldn’t be too sure of that if I was you,” Robin drawled. A most unnatural calm seemed to possess him. He felt rather indifferent to Steele’s venomous abuse. Any feeling Shining Mark betrayed was mere simulation. Every move he made, every word he uttered was calculated, part of a design. Its effect on Robin was to make him wary, watchful. If there had been any real passion in Steele’s attitude some spark in Robin would have matched it in spite of himself. “Talk’s cheap,” Robin continued. “You’re pretty small potatoes, it strikes me, to shoot off your face the way you do when you’ve got a gun on your hip and I haven’t. You’re the yellow dog, it strikes me.” “You can always heel yourself,” Mark suggested. “Why are you so keen to have me make a break at you?” Robin asked. “So I can kill you,” Mark returned. “I don’t like you.” “If you kill everybody you don’t like,” Robin curled his lip, “you sure must have a big graveyard. Where do you bury your dead, anyway?” He laughed in Steele’s face and Shining’s thin, handsome features grew dark with a genuine scowl. “I’ll make you laugh on the other side of your face,” he snapped. “You watch my smoke. Before the snow flies I’ll get you.” “I hear you,” Robin taunted. “You sound like the buzzing of a mosquito to me.”