Perhaps things fell out differently because Uri Bram had no gun that
night when he sat on the hard benches of the El Dorado and saw murder
done. To that fact also might be attributed the trip on the Long Trail
which he took subsequently with a most unlikely comrade. But be it as it
may, he repeated a second time, "Don't shoot. Can't you see I haven't a
gun?"
"Then what the flaming hell did you take after me for?" demanded the
gambler, lowering his revolver.
Uri Bram shrugged his shoulders. "It don't matter much, anyhow. I want
you to come with me."
"Where?"
"To my shack, over on the edge of the camp."
But Fortune La Pearle drove the heel of his moccasin into the snow and
attested by his various deities to the madness of Uri Bram. "Who are
you," he perorated, "and what am I, that I should put my neck into the
rope at your bidding?"
"I am Uri Bram," the other said simply, "and my shack is over there on
the edge of camp. I don't know who you are, but you've thrust the soul
from a living man's body,--there's the blood red on your sleeve,--and,
like a second Cain, the hand of all mankind is against you, and there is
no place you may lay your head.
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