The question was swiftly answered. Jim's head went up, and a light laugh prefaced his words.
"So I'm up against it?" he said calmly. Then he gazed contemptuously round on those who had rejected his hospitality. "So that's why all you fellows refused to drink with me. Well, it's a nasty pill, and it's likely to hand me indigestion." Then he deliberately turned his back on Smallbones and glanced at the counter. The drinks he had bought were still there. He looked up with a frank smile into the faces of the two men who were willing to drink with him. "Gentlemen," he said, "it seems to me there are just two drinks between me and--the rope. Will you honor a suspected man by clinking glasses with him?"
He raised his own glass to them, and Jake and Gay nearly fell over each other in their frantic efforts to express their willingness, and their disapproval of Smallbones. They clumsily clinked their glasses, and drank to the last drop. Then, in silence, they set their glasses down.
"Thanks, Jake. Thanks, Gay," said Jim, after a moment. Then he turned to the saloon-keeper. "I'm sorry the order's so small," he said, with a laugh.
"You can make it one bigger," grinned Silas, and Promptly held out his hand.
"Thanks," murmured Jim. And at the same instant Smallbones' offensive voice broke in.
"A real elegant scene," he sneered. "Most touchin'. Sort o' mothers' meetin'." But in a second his tone changed to a furious rasp. "But don't you mistake, Jim Thorpe; three drinks ain't buyin' you clear. If you're the honest man you say, you'll hev to prove it. There's the cattle with your brand on 'em. Whose hand set it on? Who keeps that brand? Who runs his stock in hidin' up in the hills? Them's the questions we're all astin', an' it's up to you to answer 'em right. Ef you don't, then----" he finished with a suggestive motion of hanging.
But Jim had had enough. A moment of blind fury seized upon him, and he swung round on his accuser. The heavy rawhide quirt hanging on his wrist was raised aloft threateningly, and his eyes were the eyes of a man at the limit of endurance.
"Another word from you and I'll flay you alive with this quirt," he cried. "You've had your say, and now, I guess, I'll have mine. You know just as much as all the rest of the folk here; no more and no less. No more and no less than I do. When you or anybody else gets definite proof that I'm a cattle-thief you are at liberty to talk, but, until then, if I hear you, or of you, publicly charging me with cattle stealing, I'll smash you, if I swing for it. Get right out, now. Get right out, quick!"