unlike polished agate, so cold and steady were they, gave no sign of
taking offense.

"You and I never were friends, Rod Norton," he said, unmoved. "Still
that's no reason you should jump me for trouble. Answering your
question, I expect to keep out from under just as long as two things
remain as they are: first, as long as I play the game square and in the
open, next, as long as an overgrown boy holds down the job of sheriff
in San Juan."

In Norton's eyes was blazing hatred, in Galloway's mere steady,
unwinking boldness.

"You saw the killing?" the sheriff asked curtly.

"Yes," said Galloway.

"The Kid there did it?"

For the first time the man slouching forward in the chair lifted his
head. Had a stranger looked in at that moment, curious to see him who
had just committed homicide . . . or murder . . . he must have
experienced a positive shock. Sullen-eyed, sullen-lipped, the
man-killer could not yet have seen the last of his teens. A thin wisp
of straw-colored hair across a low, atavistic forehead, unhealthy,
yellowish skin, with pale, lack-lustre, faded blue eyes, he looked evil
and vicious and cruel. One looking from him to Jim Galloway would have
suspected that one could be as inhuman as the other, but with the
difference that that which was but means to an end with Galloway would
be end in itself to Kid Rickard. Something of the primal savage shone