His left hand was at its old, familiar trick--fingers
shut tight over the thumb till the cords stood tense between the
knuckles and wrist--a never-failing sign that internally he was close to
the boiling-point, no matter how calm he appeared on the surface. And
when Lessard flung out that last unthinkable accusation, the explosion
came.
"You lie, you----!" MacRae spoke in a cold impersonal tone, and only the
flat strained note betrayed his feeling; but the term applied to Lessard
was one to make a man's ears burn; it was the range-riders' gauntlet
thrown squarely in an enemy's face. "You lie when you say that, and you
know you lie. I don't know your object, but I call your bluff--you--you
blasted insect!"
Lessard, if he had been blind till then, saw what was patent to me--that
he had gone a bit too far, that the man he had baited so savagely was
primed to kill him if he made a crooked move. MacRae leaned forward, his
gray eyes twin coals, the thumb of his right hand hooked suggestively in
the cartridge-belt, close by the protruding handle of his six-shooter.
They were a well-matched pair; iron-nerved, both of them, the sort of
men to face sudden death open-eyed and unafraid.
A full minute they glared at each other across the desk corner. Then
Lessard, without moving a muscle or altering his steady gaze, spoke to
Dobson.
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