There was a pause.

"Did you?"

"I did."

Again there was silence.

"Why?"

"For one thing, I was sorry for you. I really was. I had caused
you and Tony a great deal of suffering, and I cannot bring myself
to inflict actual suffering upon anyone without doing my best to
alleviate it. Then again, I had nothing against you personally. We
merely clashed in the course of--business." Mallow allowed himself
to sink back upon the desk; he turned his dark goggles upon his
friends in a blind stare of bewilderment.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he said, finally.

"Mallow thought _we_ had helped to spring him." It was McWade
speaking. "That's why he beat it up here and that's how we
happened to put him to work."

"I don't get you yet," the man in glasses muttered. "I can't
understand why--"

"What's the odds why he done it?" Stoner inquired, sharply. "Any
man that can squirt my eyes full of tobasco, and me with a six gun