THE THREE HORSEMEN
When Mr. Manley entered Rimor’s he looked sharply about him. After
the bright sunshine of the street, the subdued light in the
restaurant, due to shaded windows, caused the cattleman to squint
his eyes. He hitched up his belt, from which, in a holster, hung a
heavy revolver, and walked forward.
A bar, ostensibly for the serving of soft drinks, ran from the front
of Rimor’s place to the rear. To the right of this, on the other
side of the room, were a number of tables, three with signs on them,
“Reserved for Ladies.” These tables were the excuse for the title
“Restaurant.”
An odor of staleness permeated the room. Flies buzzed lazily in the
hot, close air. When the ranchman entered the only other person in
the place was the bartender, an aproned figure with “New York”
plainly written on his patent leather shoes and slick plastered-down
hair. He sat on a chair in front of the bar, eagerly reading a
week-old copy of a Manhattan paper.
As the cattleman approached, the barkeeper raised his eyes from the
paper and calmly surveyed Mr. Manley.
“Well, Manley, what can I do for you?” he asked in a surly voice.
Bardwell Manley was no favorite with the Rimor outfit.
“You might do a whole lot,” Mr. Manley replied slowly. “Then, again,
you might not. You know a puncher who hangs around here with a
checkered shirt?”
“Do I know a puncher who hangs around here with a checkered shirt?”
the barkeeper repeated. “Well, now, I can’t say that I do. There’s
plenty of punchers that come in here, but I never knew one yet that
hung around with a checkered shirt. Sure it’s the puncher, and not a
collar that you’re lookin’ for?”
Mr. Manley flushed beneath his tan, but he held himself in check.
“I guess you know right enough what I mean,” he said genially. “So
you ain’t seen him, hey?”
“No, I ain’t,” the man replied, with an accent of irony on the last
word. He resumed his reading.
Mr. Manley stood for a moment looking down at the hunched figure
before him. He tightened his jaw, and little knobs of muscles showed
just below his ears. To those who knew Bardwell Manley, this was a
sign not to be ignored.
“Mind if I take a look around?” the cattleman said easily.
“Nope! Go as far as you like.” The barkeeper did not look up.
Mr. Manley walked toward the rear of the place. As he did so, a man
stepped from a side door and confronted him. It was the cowboy in
the checkered shirt.
“Lookin’ for some one?” he asked.
“Was. Found him now,” Mr. Manley answered shortly. “I want to talk
to you. Do you know Gilly Froud?”
“Suppose I do?” the puncher answered insolently.
“This much. I think you know something about my broncs that were
stolen from the hitchin’ rail out there a while ago.” Mr. Manley
looked at the man keenly.
“Yea?” The puncher drew a sack of tobacco and cigarette papers from
his shirt pocket. Deftly he rolled a cigarette and applied a match
to it. “Well, suppose I do?” he asked, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
His right hand slid inside his heavy shirt and toward his left
armpit.
Mr. Manley saw the motion and his own hand flashed down to his side.
Suddenly there was a wild yell behind him, and an empty bottle
whizzed past his head. The barkeeper, seeing Mr. Manley going for
his gun, had picked up the bottle and aimed for the ranchman’s head.
Swift as light Mr. Manley turned. His gun leaped from its holster,
and he brought down the butt end on the barkeeper’s wrist.
The rascal’s right arm went limp. He uttered another yell and sank
back in alarm.
At that moment the door burst open, and Pop, followed by Roy and
Teddy, leaped into the room. The barkeeper bent to pick up a bottle
with his left hand, but before he could reach it Roy kicked it into
the corner and shoved his revolver into the man’s ribs. Teddy,
seeing that his father was uninjured, made a dash for the man in the
checkered shirt.
But the lad was too late. The puncher, realizing the turn affairs
had taken, disappeared through the side door, slamming it behind
him. When Teddy reached it and flung it open, the man was gone. It
would be useless, as well as foolhardly, to follow down that dark
passageway upon which the door gave entrance. Best to hunt for the
fellow outside the place, or to hope Gus and Nick, who had waited at
the front of the restaurant, had seen and stopped him. Teddy turned
back.
“You all right, Dad?” Roy and Teddy asked in almost the same breath.
“All right, boys,” their father answered cheerfully. “He never
touched me.”
“What’ll we do with this varmint, boss?” Pop asked, poking the
barkeeper with the barrel of his gun.
“I cracked him one on the wrist,” Mr. Manley said. “Guess we’ll let
him alone, Pop. He won’t do no harm for a long while yet. Say,
where’d that other hombre get to?”
“He ducked out,” Teddy answered. “Went through a side door. I didn’t
chase him, because I didn’t know where he’d gone. I thought maybe
Nick or Gus would spot him.”
“Maybe. I hope so. That bucker knows something about our ponies, or
I’m a ring-tailed doodlebug. Pop, quit pokin’ that geezer with your
gun. Hey, you--” this to the “geezer” sharply, “better have that arm
bandaged, or it’ll go bad on you.” This was characteristic of
Bardwell Manley--solicitous even of a man who had tried to attack
him from the back.
“Boss, we better get out of here,” Pop declared. “If you want to
hunt them broncs, we ought to get goin’.”
“As usual, Pop, your lips gives forth words of wisdom. We shall
leave. Stranger, you tend to that arm of yours.”
Mr. Manley, followed by Teddy, Roy, and Pop, made for the door.
Outside, in the street, a crowd awaited them. That is, a crowd for
Eagles--population one hundred and fifty in a rush season. Three
cowboys, one woman, and five children stood staring curiously at the
four men as they emerged from Rimor’s Place. Nick and Gus Tripp were
prancing about on restless ponies, rifles held in readiness. As
these two saw the four men, their faces cleared and Nick yelled:
“Everything O. K., boss?”
“Yes!” Mr. Manley answered. Then, as his eye roved over the small
crowd in front of the restaurant, he added. “We were havin’ a little
argument, that’s all. It’s all over now.”
The cowboys looked dubious at this explanation of the yelling, but
the gathered people slowly drifted away. The boys remounted their
ponies, which, like good Western horses, had stood quiet when the
reins were thrown over their heads and left dangling.
Roy urged his animal over to Nick.
“Say, Nick,” he said in a low voice, “you and Gus didn’t see
anything of a puncher in a checkered shirt busting out of Rimor’s,
did you?”
“No, we didn’t, Roy,” Nick answered.
“He the bucker what was doin’ the yelling?” Gus asked casually. It
would take a great deal to startle Gus out of his placid way. When
he acted, he acted quickly. When he did nothing, to quote himself,
he “did it just as slow as he knew how.” Gus was a product of New
Mexico.
“He didn’t do any yelling,” Teddy answered. “That was done by the
New York plug-ugly they’ve got in there for a barkeeper. Dad taught
him a few things about the use of a revolver.”
“Kill him?” Gus drawled, as though he were asking the time of day.
“Certainly not!” Roy answered, startled. “He just clubbed him. Put
his right arm out of commission by a crack from the butt of his
gun.”
Nick Looker nodded approvingly. Nick was young and fair-haired. He
had not the assumed callousness of Gus. He knew, though, that
beneath this pretended hardness, Gus had a heart as soft as a
woman’s.
“We’ll be gettin’ on,” Mr. Manley said. He had heard Nick say he had
not seen “checkered shirt,” as Roy called the puncher, and he knew
there would be no use in delaying further. They could get no
information in Eagles.
The six swung down the main street and out of the town. They were
riding directly away from the X Bar X and into a valley separating
Bitter Cliff Mountain from its neighbor, Mica Mountain. Here the
road lost its travel-worn appearance and dwindled into an uphill
trail. Up this trail the six men rode.
Teddy and Roy were in the rear of the riders, about two hundred
yards from the rest.
The trail turned now, and in a moment those ahead were out of sight
of the two boys.
“Come on, let’s get along,” Roy said. “Dad’s hitting a good gait,
all right.”
Touching spurs to the ponies, Roy and Teddy galloped forward. They
came to a fork in the trail, and here halted for a moment.
“This way,” Teddy advised, with a gesture. “That other’s only a
little path. I rode over it just the other day.”
Roy did not reply. He pulled his horse to a halt and stared up the
left trail. Seeing him stop, his brother did likewise.
“What’s the matter, Roy?” Teddy asked in a puzzled tone.
“Ahead there!” Roy exclaimed in a tense voice. “Those horses! See
them?”
Teddy stared intently up the steep trail. Then he gave a yell.
“Our broncs! Flash and Star and General, or I’m a Lottie Blue-bird!
Who’s ridin’ ’em? Let’s go get ’em!”
A quarter of a mile above them, three men on three horses turned and
looked down the trail. For a moment they stood, watching Roy and
Teddy dashing toward them. Then, without a word, they wheeled and
disappeared around a bend.