And Buck, during all this time, never once opened his lips, except to lick his tongue across them, and never once took his eyes off Ward.
"I've sure put the fear of the Lord into you, haven't I, Buck?" Ward observed maliciously, wiping a blob of hairy lather upon a page torn from an old Sears-Roebuck catalogue. "I was kinda hoping you had more nerve. I wanted to get a whack at you, just to prove I'm not joshing."
Buck swallowed again, but he made no reply.
Ward washed his face in a basin of steaming water, got a can of talcum out of the dish cupboard, and took the soap-shine off his cheeks and chin. He combed his hair before the little mirror--trying unavailingly to take the wave out of it with water, and leaving it more crinkly over his temples than it had been in the first place--and retied the four-in-hand under the soft collar of his shirt.
"I wish you'd talk, Buck," he said, turning toward the other. He looked very boyish and almost handsome, except for the expression of his eyes, which gave Buck the shivers, and the set of his lips, which was cruel. "I've read how the Chinks hand out what they call the death-of-a-thousand-cuts; I was thinking I'd like to try it out on you. But--oh, well, this is Friday. It may as well go as a hanging." He made a poor job of his calm irony, but Buck was not in the mental condition to be critical.
The main facts were sufficiently ominous to offset Ward's attempt at facetiousness. Indeed, the very weakness of the attempt was in itself ominous. Ward might try to be coldly malevolent, but the light that burned in his eyes, and the rage that tightened his lips, gave the lie to his forced composure.
He went out and led up the horses to the door. He came back and started to untie Buck Olney's feet, then bethought him of the statement he had promised to write. He got a magazine and tore out the frontispiece--which, oddly enough, was a somber picture of Death hovering with outstretched wings over a battlefield--and wrote several lines in pencil on the back of it, where the paper was smooth and white.
"How's that?" he asked, holding up the paper so that Buck could read what he had written. "I ain't in the mood to sit down and write a whole book, so I had to boil down your pedigree. But that will do the business all right, don't you think?"
Buck read with staring eyes, looked into Ward's face, and opened his lips for protest or pleading. Then he followed Ward's glance to the knife on the table and shut his mouth with a snap. Ward laughed grimly, picked up the knife, and ran his thumb lightly over the edge to test its keenness. "Put a fresh edge on it for me, huh?" he commented. "Well, we may as well get started, I reckon. I'm getting almighty sick of seeing you around."