“Say, I was right what I said to Deely--I was right,” remarked Sibley almost huskily, for it seemed to him as though he had found a long-lost brother. No man except one who had staked all he had again and again could have looked or spoken like that.
Crozier looked at the other thoughtfully for a moment, then he said:
“I don’t know what you said to Deely, but I do know that I’m going to the Logan Trial in spite of the M’Mahon mob. I don’t feel about it as you do. I’ve got a different feeling, Sibley. I’ll play the game out. I shall not hedge. I shall not play for safety. It’s everything on the favourite this time.”
“You’ll excuse me, but Gus Burlingame is for the defence, and he’s got his knife into you,” returned Sibley.
“Well, I apologise, but what I’ve said, Mr. Kerry, is said as man to man. You’re ridin’ game in a tough place, as any man has to do who starts with only his pants and his head on. That’s the way you begun here, I guess; and I don’t want to see your horse tumble because some one throws a fence-rail at its legs. Your class has enemies always in a new country--jealousy, envy.”
The lean, aristocratic, angular Crozier, with a musing look on his long face, grown ascetic again, as he held out his hand and gripped that of the other, said warmly: “I’m just as much obliged to you as though I took your advice, Sibley. I am not taking it, but I am taking a pledge to return the compliment to you if ever I get the chance.”
“Well, most men get chances of that kind,” was the gratified reply of the gambling farmer, and then Crozier turned quickly and entered the doorway of the British Bank, the rival of that from which he had turned in brave disappointment a little while before.
Left alone in the street, Sibley looked back with the instinct of the hunter. As he expected, he saw a head thrust out from the window where Studd Bradley and his friends had been. There was an hotel opposite the British Bank. He entered and waited. Bradley and one of his companions presently came in and seated themselves far back in the shadow, where they could watch the doorway of the bank.
It was quite a half-hour before Shiel Crozier emerged from the bank. His face was set and pale. For an instant he stood as though wondering which way to go, then he moved up the street the way he had come.