“I’ll give you a bit of free information,” said the little man, with his weary eyes lighted a little.  “There’s no man on the face of the earth who could make Lord Nick back down.”

Once more Joe Rix was shocked to the verge of gaping, but again he exercised a power of marvelous self control “About that,” he remarked as pointedly as before, “I got my doubts.  Because there’s some things that any gent with sense will always clear away from.  Maybe not one man—­but say a bunch of all standin’ together.”

Donnegan leaned back in his chair and waited.  Both of his hands remained drooping from the edge of the table, and the tired eyes drifted slowly across the face of Joe Rix.

It was obviously not the aftereffects of liquor.  The astonishing possibility occurred to Joe Rix that this seemed to be a man with a broken spirit and a great sorrow.  He blinked that absurdity away.

“Coming to cases,” he went on, “there’s yourself, Mr. Donnegan.  Now, you’re the sort of a man that don’t sidestep nobody.  Too proud to do it.  But even you, I guess, would step careful if there was a whole bunch agin’ you.”

“No doubt,” remarked Donnegan.

“I don’t mean any ordinary bunch,” explained Joe Rix, “but a lot of hard fellows.  Gents that handle their guns like they was born with a holster on the hip.”

“Fellows like Nick’s crowd,” suggested Donnegan quietly.

At this thrust the eyes of Joe narrowed a little.

“Yes,” he admitted, “I see you get my drift.”

“I think so.”

“Two hard fighters would give the best man that ever pulled a gun a lot of trouble.  Eh?”

“No doubt.”

“And three men—­they ain’t any question, Mr. Donnegan—­would get him ready for a hole in the ground.”

“I suppose so.”

“And four men would make it no fight—­jest a plain butchery.”

“Yes?”

“Now, I don’t mean that Nick’s crowd has any hard feeling about you, Mr. Donnegan.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“I knew you’d be.  That’s why I’ve come, all friendly, to talk things over.  Suppose you look at it this way—­”

“Joe Rix,” broke in Donnegan, sighing, “I’m very tired.  Won’t you cut this short?  Tell me in ten words just how you stand.”

Joe Rix blinked once more, caught his breath, and fired his volley.

“Short talk is straight talk, mostly,” he declared.  “This is what Lester and the rest of us want—­the mines!”

“Ah?”

“Macon stole ’em.  We got ’em back through Landis.  Now we’ve got to get ’em back through the colonel himself.  But we can’t get at the colonel while you’re around.”

“In short, you’re going to start out to get me?  I expected it, but it’s kind of you to warn me.”

“Wait, wait, wait!  Don’t rush along to conclusions.  We ain’t so much in a hurry.  We don’t want you out of the way.  We just want you on our side.”