Yet when they returned to the shack, where Cheyenne sat smoking, Bartley
learned that Big Joe Scott had a reputation in his own country. That was
when Scott suggested that they needed sleep. He spread a blanket-roll on
the cabin floor for Cheyenne and offered Bartley his bunk. Then Scott
picked up his rifle and strode across to a shed. Cheyenne pulled off his
boots, stretched out on the blanket-roll, and sighed comfortably.
Bartley could see the big miner busily twisting something in his hands,
something that looked like a leather bag from which occasional tiny
spurts of silver gleamed and trickled. Bartley wondered what Scott was
doing. He asked Cheyenne.
"He's squeezin' 'quick.'" And Cheyenne explained the process of
squeezing quicksilver through a chamois skin. "And I'm glad it ain't my
neck," added Cheyenne. "Joe killed a man, with his bare hands, onct.
That's why he never gets in a fight, nowadays. He dassn't. 'Course, he
had to kill that man, or get killed."
"I noticed he picked up his rifle," said Bartley.
"Nobody'll disturb our sleep," said Cheyenne drowsily.
* * * * *
The afternoon shadows were long when Bartley awakened.
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