"And three men--they ain't any question, Mr. Donnegan--would get him ready for a hole in the ground."
"And four men would make it no fight--jest a plain butchery."
"Now, I don't mean that Nick's crowd has any hard feeling about you, Mr. Donnegan."
"I knew you'd be. That's why I've come, all friendly, to talk things over. Suppose you look at it this way--"
"Joe Rix," broke in Donnegan, sighing, "I'm very tired. Won't you cut this short? Tell me in ten words just how you stand."
Joe Rix blinked once more, caught his breath, and fired his volley.
"Short talk is straight talk, mostly," he declared. "This is what Lester and the rest of us want--the mines!"
"Macon stole 'em. We got 'em back through Landis. Now we've got to get 'em back through the colonel himself. But we can't get at the colonel while you're around."
"In short, you're going to start out to get me? I expected it, but it's kind of you to warn me."
"Wait, wait, wait! Don't rush along to conclusions. We ain't so much in a hurry. We don't want you out of the way. We just want you on our side."
"Shoot me up and then bring me back to life, eh?"
"Mr. Donnegan," said the other, spreading out his hands solemnly on the table, "you ain't doin' us justice. We don't hanker none for trouble with you. Any way it comes, a fight with you means somebody dead besides you. We'd get you. Four to one is too much for any man. But one or two of us might go down. Who would it be? Maybe the Pedlar, maybe Harry Masters, maybe Lester, maybe me! Oh, we know all that. No gunplay if we can keep away from it."
"You've left out the name of Lord Nick," said Donnegan.
"Seems like you tended to him once and for all when you got him alone in this cabin. Must have thrown a mighty big scare into him. He won't lift a hand agin' you now."
"Not him! But that leaves four of us, and four is plenty, eh?"
"But I'm not here to insist on that point. No, we put a value on keepin' up good feeling between us and you, Mr. Donnegan. We ain't fools. We know a man when we see him--and the fastest gunman that ever slid a gun out of leather ain't the sort of a man that me and the rest of the boys pass over lightly. Not us! We know you, Mr. Donnegan; we respect you; we want you with us; we're going to have you with us."