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Taggart nodded and said swiftly:

"My papers stand that way to this day! I never go back...."

"The more fool you, then," jeered Standing. "I'm done with you, and my papers are changed already...."

"Already?" Taggart started visibly. "Since when?"

"Since yesterday. Nothing I own, not so much as a wart on a log of mine, ever goes your way."

The bitterness in Taggart's soul overspilled into his voice as he cried out savagely:

"Sure, there you are! That's the way it goes. Now that your luck's been running high and you don't need me, now that my luck's been dragging bottom, why then you're ready to pitch me over...."

"Liar!" Timber-Wolf cut him short with the word which was like an explosion. But he did not pause to discuss a point of view, but continued immediately: "That's the first thing. Here's the second: You've decided to run neck and neck with Young Gallup. So you can take him a word from me. Tell him"—and Standing's voice, husky with his emotions, made even Jim Taggart wonder what was coming—"that I came into his skunk hole of a town to-night just because he had the nerve to tell me not to. Tell him that I know that was his work that my horse was killed just now. Tell it him that if I ever come into his skunk hole once more in my life, it will be to pull his damned town down about his ears."