"The boy is game!
And now he's going to come out after me, and there won't be any talking
done and it's going to be Kid Bedloe or me. And," with much certainty,
but with a little sigh, half regretful, "the Kid is just a shade slow on
the draw. Sure as two and two I've got to kill him. Oh, hell," he
concluded disgustedly. "Why did this have to happen? Haven't I got
enough on my hands already?"
CHAPTER XXVI
THE FRAME-UP
Thornton returned to his cabin long before the first faint streak of
daylight, and not once during the night did he think of sleep. At his
little table in the light of his coal-oil lamp he read over and over the
hurried words which Winifred Waverly had been driven to put on paper for
him. At first his look was merely charged with perplexity; then there
came into it incredulity and finally sheer amazement.
"The pack of hounds!" he cried softly when he had done, his fist
striking hard upon his table. "The pack of low down, dirty hounds!"
For now, in a flash, he saw and understood beyond the limits to which
the girl's vision had gone, grasping explanations denied to her. She had
told him everything which she knew or suspected, saying somewhere in her
account, "I know now that my first judgment of you, before I was
deceived into thinking Ben Broderick you, was right.
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