The words were scrawled rather than written, scrawled in indelible
pencil, and there were purple blotches where tears had fallen on the
penciled lines. However, it could still be easily deciphered.
“_Your uncle is gone. You will be next. Beat it quick. U-No-Hoo._”
At the end of the counter I looked for the cashier. There was none, not
even a cash register. The Oriental shuffled down the bar and held me
with his beady eyes.
“You pay um flifty cents. You come back bleakfast?”
I threw him a half dollar and shrugged my shoulders by way of answer,
then strolled to my black, took a nosebag from the saddle and gave him
his grain. He had come far that day, and there was a strange feeling in
the depths of my mind that he might have to go further that night.
The lights of a card-room blazed forth whitely into the night. The place
was lit with a gasoline lantern, and the windows showed startlingly
brilliant against the black of the night. I wandered aimlessly within,
found a vacant chair at a draw poker game, and purchased a stack of
chips.
The play was slow, and I was paying more attention to the men in the
room than to the cards. I did not play to win, and I did not intend to
lose. As a result I made many antes but few draws, looking, listening,
thinking.
And then, suddenly, I caught my own name. It was in the middle of a
sentence, and it came from behind me, where some man was leaning against
the bar, drinking the deadly white mule and discoursing with a friend.
“... Black Barr; yeah, sure I know him. I throwed down on him once near
Yuma, an’ he was a good dog with me ever after. Yeah, he may be quick,
but he ain’t so all-fired quick as yuh hear about. I gave him an even
break, an’ I had him covered before his own guns were half way out.
“What’d he do? He just histed his hands for the sky an’ grinned at
me—not that deadly grin he gets when he’s killin’, but a sorta friendly,
sociable grin. ‘You win,’ he says, an’ he says it so blame sociable an’
friendly like that I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger.
“Yeah, he looks just like the way they describe him. He’s got black hair
an’ eyes, an’ there’s a sombre somethin’ about his face. He wears a
black hat an’ coat, an’ black angora chaps. When he’s gettin’ mad is the
time to recognize him, though. Then his mouth commences to crawl an’
squirm over his face like a rattlesnake twistin’ around through a clump
o’ cactus.”
Casually, I turned and surveyed the speaker. He was a loud-mouthed
killer. One of the second-rate gunmen who circulate around wherever
trouble is to be had, selling their services as paid murderers,
enhancing their reputations by bar-room bragging. Yellow to the core,
they shoot from ambush or when they have all the advantage, and seek to
terrify honest cattlemen by tales of their exploits. I knew the type,
but the man I had never seen before.
I shrugged my shoulders and fixed my attention on the card game. I am
not a killer, although I have often killed; and therein is a vast
difference.
I looked at my cards, and saw three queens. A player across the board
pulled out a roll of bills. “I’m declarin’ these in the game,” he said
before picking up his cards. “Any other player can do the same.”
I glanced casually at the faces of the men. Without exception my fellow
players were looking at me. Evidently a deal had been framed up. I would
be given four queens after the draw, and my opponent would have the hand
beaten, the others dropping out after the betting was well under way. It
was an old trap, but I would pretend to walk in it, would declare in a
roll of bills and then throw the four queens into the discard with the
money still in front of me. There is nothing which causes more
irritation to a professional gambler who is trying to catch a “live
one.”