A cowpuncher came to the door, a gun on either hip, a broad smile on his
face, and jerked his thumb to a side door.
“You’ll find ’m in there.”
I went through the side door, and my hands swung low as I entered the
spacious room.
A figure was seated before a desk, a figure that was almost unbelievably
fat. Fat seemed to ooze through his skin, to collect in greasy globules
on his forehead, to have formed in a rancid coating over the hairy
hands. His thick, sensuous lips were wreathed in a smile and his eye
glittered with hoggish self-satisfaction.
“Black Barr, I believe,” and his voice was thin, piping, high like the
squeal of a pig when he first plants his forefeet in a food trough. “I
had to get you out here some way. I can’t ride, and I wanted to talk
with you.”
On either side of him was a bodyguard, and he needed it. Thin, rat-like
individuals they were, with shifty glances and hands that rested on
their belts.
“Black Barr, I need you. My enemies, the Flying M, are on the warpath,
my men are being killed and my homesteads are being burned.”