“Whisper’ll listen to you. Find him, will you? Put it to him. Here’s the proposish: he means to get me for knocking off Jerry Hooper, and I mean to get him first. Let’s forget that for a couple of days. Nobody won’t have to trust nobody else. Whisper don’t ever show in any of his jobs anyways. He just sends the boys. I’ll do the same this time. We’ll just put the mobs together to swing the caper. We run them together, rub out that damned Finn, and then we’ll have plenty of time to go gunning among ourselves.

“Put it to him cold. I don’t want him to get any ideas that I’m dodging a rumpus with him or any other guy. Tell him I say if we put Pete out of the way we’ll have more room to do our own scrapping in. Pete’s holed-up down in Whiskeytown. I ain’t got enough men to go down there and pull him out. Neither has Whisper. The two of us together has. Put it to him.”

“Whisper,” I said, “is dead.”

Reno said, “Is that so?” as if he thought it wasn’t.