"What's the idea--to swindle yourself ?" "You will do me the justice to remember," observed Dewing with a thin-lipped smile, "that I urged upon you, repeatedly and most strongly, as a desirable preliminary to our operations, to remove Mr.Peter Johnson from this unsatisfactory world without any formal declaration of war." "I won't do it!" declared Zurich bluntly.

"And--damn you--you shan't do it! He's a dangerous old bow-legged person, and I wish he was farther.

And I must admit that I am myself most undesirous for any personal bickering with him.

To hear Jim Scarboro relate it, old Pete is one wiz with a six-gun.

All the same, I'll not let him be shot from ambush.