I don’t know what he was going to say—whether I was going to win or lose.
The front door slammed open, and Gooseneck Flinn came into the room.
His clothes were white with dust. His face was thrust forward to the full length of his long, yellow neck.
His shoe-button eyes focused on me. His hands turned over. That’s all you could see. They simply turned over—and there was a heavy revolver in each.
“Your paws on the table, Ed,” he snarled.
Ed’s gun—if that is what he had in his pocket—was blocked from a shot at the man in the doorway by a corner of the table. He took his hand out of his pocket, empty, and laid both palms down on the tabletop.
“Stay where y’r at!” Gooseneck barked at the girl.
She was standing on the other side of the room. The knife with which she had pricked the back of my neck was not in sight.
Gooseneck glared at me for nearly a minute, but when he spoke it was to Ed and Kewpie.
“So this is what y’ wired me to come back for, huh? A trap! Me the goat for yur! I’ll be y’r goat! I’m goin’ to speak my piece, an’ then I’m goin’ out o’ here if I have to smoke my way through the whole damn Mex army! I killed y’r wife all right—an’ her help, too. Killed ’em for the thousand bucks—”
The girl took a step toward him, screaming:
“Shut up, damn you!”