"Oh, I know all about what temptation is to any men--especially a young man," said the colonel blandly.
"But I'll bet you a hundred dollars to a toothpick you never knew what it was to resist temptation," shouted Parker. "And I'm going to tell you now and here that I'd no more accept your offer and take a job with you than I'd poison myself with paris green." He flung himself back in his chair and glared at his tempter with honest indignation.
For a little while Ward stared at him, open-mouthed. His surprise was greater, for he believed that he had landed his fish.
"And don't you make me any more offers. I've no use for them or for you, either," cried the young man, his voice trembling.
"I've read about such critters as you be," said the colonel slowly, "but it was in a dime novel and it was a good many years ago and I didn't believe it. I believe it said in the novel that the young man died young and went to heaven--the only one of his kind. P'raps I'm wrong and he didn't die--went to heaven jest as he stood in his shoes and co't and pants."
Parker merely scowled back at the biting irony of this rejoinder.
"There's no dime novel or any other kind of a novel to this affair, Colonel Ward. I'm not especially fitted to be the hero of a book. Nor to be one of your hired men, either."
"Then ye've made up your mind to straddle out your legs and play Branscome's mule, hey?"
"He kicked when ye tried to drive him with a whip and he bit and squealed when ye tried to coax him along with sweet apples. So if ye won't neither lead nor drive, then out with it man fashion."
The two men sat and looked at each other a long time, the old man's choler rising the higher from the fact that it had been so long repressed. The young man's glance did not fall before this furious regard.
At last Ward quivered his fists above his head, stamped around the little room and went to the door.
"You've got a few hours to do a little more thinkin' in, and then you look out for yourself, for it's up to you, you--," he slammed and locked the door and went away, cursing horribly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN--THE BEAR THAT WALKED LIKE A MAN
That in this age of law and order Gideon Ward meditated any actual violence to his person Parker found it hard to believe as he sat there in the "wangan" and pondered on his situation. He could not avoid the conclusion that at heart Colonel Ward was a coward. But sometimes circumstances that a brave man will not suffer to rule him will drive a coward into crime.