[Illustration]
All the way Westward in the smoker the man in the high-crowned, black
Stetson had taken no part in the conversation. He had appeared to doze,
slumping in the high-backed seat as the train rushed onward into the
golden afternoon.
The three men at his back had been busy with an interminable round of
poker: draw, jack-pot, and stud; deuces wild, and seven-card peak. They
moved across the aisle now, as the long train slowed for the brief stop
at Two-Horse Canyon, facing him obliquely and a little to his left.
Twice or thrice they had essayed to draw him into the talk, but
the man in the black Stetson had been oblivious; he had continued
taciturn—morose, almost, one might have said. But he had not been asleep;
rather, he had listened with all his ears as their voices had reached him
between hands:
“... Yes—Dry Bone—been there myself—they run things pretty much to
suit _themselves_.... Wide-open.... Sure.... You might call it a dead
open-and-shut proposition, I’ll tell a man!”
The laugh that followed had come to the man in the black Stetson with a
curious, grating note:
“Sure-thing gamblers; con-men—it’s a regular crook’s paradise.... And
there’s that fellow, Rook....”
The eyes of the man in the black Stetson narrowed abruptly at the
corners; for a moment, as a curtain is drawn swiftly from right to left,
something arose to peer out of those eyes, glowing, deep-down, like a
still, festering flame. But it was gone upon the instant—
“... And there’s that fellow, Rook....” the man had said.
Of a sudden he had stopped short as if he had been muzzled; presently his
voice had come again, dry, matter-of-fact:
“I’ll see that raise, Carpenter, and it’ll cost you just twenty iron men
to call....”
Plainly, that name, “Rook,” had been taboo; the speaker had been silently
reminded of it.
The man in the black Stetson—he had been known as Black Steve Annister
in the back blocks at Wooloomooloof before he had made of that name a
by-word in the honkatonks and the gambling-hells from San Francisco
northward to the Wind River country, and beyond it—Black Steve Annister
was sitting upright now, but he had retired behind a wide-spread copy of
the _Durango County Gazette_. He was not reading it, however, although he
was looking through it—at the three men just across the aisle, studying
them through the pin-pricks he had made in it, himself unseen.
Annister had arrived in New York only the week previous from Sourabaya,
Java, and he had not waited even overnight before he had begun the long
journey, broken at Washington for half a day, which had taken him now
half way southwestward across the State of Texas. Presently the long
train would cross the Pecos, beyond it the serrated ramparts of the
Guadalupes; Dry Bone was just between.
Annister, studying the men, frowned abruptly, yawning behind his hand.
Two of the men he put down for ranchers—sheep men, probably; there was
about them none of the glamor of that West which lingers even now in the
person of a cattleman; and these men were negligible.
But the third man would have been noticeable anywhere. He was a bull’s
bulk of a man, hard-featured, mouth a straight gash above a heavy chin
barbered to the blood; the observer across the aisle would have said
“cowman,” and registered a bull’s eye with it, point-blank.
The two who were with him, evidently with interests in common, were
scarcely friendly with the cowman, if such he was; it was evident in
their attitude, the constraint which had fallen upon them following that
mention of “Rook.”
But the man in the black Stetson continued to study the big fellow
through the holes in his newspaper: the hard face, tanned a rich
saddle color; the nose, flattened to a smudge of flaring nostril; the
cauliflower ear.
He had heard the name, “Ellison” once or twice; somewhere, deep down, it
had set vibrating a chord of memory that brought with it, incongruously
enough, an altogether different setting: a padded ring under twin,
blazing arcs; the thud and shuffle of sliding feet; a man, huge, brutish,
broad, fists like stone mauls, yet, for all his bulk, a very cat for
quickness....
He put down his paper now—to find those hard eyes boring into his.
Ellison, or whatever the man’s name was, had shifted in his seat; the
glance that he turned now upon the stranger in the black Stetson was
searching, probing. There was a truculence in it, a fierce, bright,
avid staring, like an animal’s, savage in its very directness, like a
challenge—which in effect it was.
Annister returned the look, eye for eye, with a bitter, brooding
insolence in which there was apparent a certain mockery, his eyes in a
veiled gleaming, like the sun on water. For a long moment their glances
engaged, in a silent duel, like rapier points; then the giant with the
cauliflower ear vented a sound between a grunt and a snort, turning to
the window, his gaze outward across the flat levels of the adjacent
prairie in a kind of sightless stare.
There had been no reason in it—no logic—that Annister could see, but for
the moment he had owned to a sudden sense of crisis; it had seemed to him
for a moment that in the giant’s eyes there had been almost a knowing, an
understanding look. But the man could have no business with him—of that
he was certain.
The fellow was just a bully, probably, a big, hulking lump of beef who
resented, as it might chance, Annister’s undeniably cosmopolitan air;
the sardonic flicker in the gray-green eyes; the cool, contemptuous
appraisal. But, after all, it had been the giant who had begun it.
And yet, somehow, Annister was thinking that he had seen him before, and,
oddly, illogically enough, he found himself liking the man—why, he could
not have told.
Black Steve Annister, “with the heart of a cougar and the conscience of a
wolf,” as a disgruntled enemy had at one time phrased it, could have sat
into that game had he been so minded, with profit to himself, pecuniary
and otherwise, but he had preferred to play the hand that had been dealt
him. Later, at Dry Bone, that would be another matter.
Now, his lean, strong, hawklike face darkened abruptly with the thought
behind his eyes, and then—for Annister had eyes in the back of his
head—he was suddenly aware that the conductor was advancing along the
aisle.
The three men opposite had ceased their conversation as if at an order.
Two or three of the remaining passengers stared curiously, after the
manner of their kind (they were small tradesmen, merchants, going on
beyond the border to Tucson), as the conductor halted at Annister’s elbow.
“Excuse me, Mister—Mister—” he began.
“—Annister!” The answer was low, even, controlled, but beneath the silken
tone there ran a hint of iron.
“Mister Annister,” repeated the conductor. “Will you—just a moment,
please?”
Annister rose, following the official outward toward the vestibule. And
as he went he could feel those eyes, avid, curious, boring into his back.
He permitted himself the ghost of a cold grin as the conductor, turning
in the entry, laid a respectful hand upon his sleeve.
“I’m—sorry, sir,” he said, low. “You getting off at Dry Bone, aren’t you?”
The words were less a question than a statement of fact. Annister nodded.
The conductor, a tall, bronzed man who might have been an old-time line
rider, shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Then he said, his tone
even, matter-of-fact:
“I—_wouldn’t_—if I was you.”
Annister stared. Then, producing his cigar-case, lighting a long, black
invincible, the twin to which the conductor had selected, he remarked
casually:
“They’re good cigars.... In the trenches we smoked ‘Woodbines’—a cross
between tar-heel and alfalfa; you have a lot of alfalfa out here, eh? And
the ‘third light,’ as we used to call it, most always got his—three men
lighting up from the same match, you know.”
His tone abruptly hardened; the glance that he turned upon the conductor
now was like a lance of flame.
“Well—I’m not superstitious—but—will you tell me _why_?”
It is significant that the conductor was breaking a rigid Company rule by
joining Annister in a surreptitious cigar. Now he turned guiltily as a
voice sounded from the corridor at his back:
“Ex-cuse me—but could I trouble you for a light?”
The third man, as Annister could see, was tall and heavily built, with
broad shoulders and a curiously small head. He had a sharp, acquisitive
nose, and a mouth tight-lipped and thin. Annister, versed in reading men,
was abruptly conscious of an instinctive and overmastering repugnance.
For the man’s eyes were cold and cruel, sleepy-lidded, like a snake’s,
roving between Annister and the conductor in a furtive scrutiny.
The match was still alight. Annister, his hand steady as a rock, extended
it to the newcomer, who, with an inarticulate grunt, lighted his
cigarette, turning, without further speech, backward along the corridor.
Annister waited a moment until he was certain that the man was out of
earshot. Then:
“The ‘third light,’ eh?” he murmured, his tone abruptly hardened.
“Well—and why shouldn’t I get off?” he asked, grimly.
The conductor for a moment seemed at a loss.
“It’s like this, Mr. Annister,” he said slowly. “I’m a new man on the S.
P., but I’ve been hearing a lot—no gossip, you understand—but a conductor
hears a good deal, by and large.... And this is a cow country, or it used
to be—pretty wild, in spots. Dry Bone, now—they run things pretty much to
suit themselves—”
He paused, in a visible embarrassment.
“There’s a party of four back there in the diner—I couldn’t help
overhearing what they were saying, and—well—I’m just repeating what they
said, and no offense—”
“That’s all right,” interrupted Annister, evenly. “Go on.”
“Why—they said,” continued the conductor, “that you were an Eastern
gambler—a—confidence-man—that you were not wanted here in Dry Bone; that
it wouldn’t be exactly healthy for you if you stopped off—that’s all. I
thought you’d be wanting to know. And if you’ll take my advice, even if
you haven’t asked it, I’d say: go on to Tombstone—you can figure it out
from there.”
“Thanks,” answered Annister shortly. “I’m getting off—at Dry Bone. How
soon are we due?”
“Fifteen minutes,” replied the conductor, glancing at his watch. “But
if I was you, sir, I’d stay aboard; it’s a bad crowd there, as I happen
to know, and they’ve got a branch of the S. S. S. there, only they work
it to suit themselves: tar-and-feathers is just a picnic with that gang;
they’re a stemwinding bunch of assassins, I’ll say! So far they’ve
operated under cover, mostly, and down here in the Southwest—well—it
ain’t a lot different, in some ways, than it was thirty years ago. You’ll
see—because they’re—”
“—Southwest of the Law—is that it?” Annister laughed shortly. “Well—much
obliged, old-timer,” he said. “I won’t forget it. But I’m getting off.”
The long train was slowing for the station stop. Annister, striding to
his seat, got down his heavy bag. For a moment he stood, considering, his
gaze, under lowered lids, upon the long coach and its passengers in a
swift, squinting appraisal.
The three men were gone.
Somehow, they had found out who he was. Well—that made little difference,
he reflected, grimly, except to force matters to a show-down, and the
sooner the better.
For there was a man in Dry Bone; Annister had known him in the old time;
and it was with this man, unless he was greatly mistaken, that his
business had to do.
He would put it to the touch, then; he would sit into the game, and would
come heeled, and they could rib up the deck on him, and welcome.
He was turning to the door when, of a sudden, there came to him a second
warning: there was a swish of skirts, a sudden odor of violets. Annister
had a glimpse of a blonde head beneath a close-fitting toque, as the girl
passed him, disappearing in the doorway.
And there, on the flooring at his feet, was a square of white.
Annister, stooping, retrieved it, holding the card upward to the light:
“_Stay on board. Dry Bone is not safe—for you. Be warned—in
time._”
There was no signature. Annister made a little clucking sound with his
tongue, his face set like flint. He was alone in the car.
The train had stopped now as, bag in hand, he shouldered through the
doorway. And then, abruptly, as if materialized out of the air, a face
grinned into his, lips drawn backward from the teeth in a soundless
snarl. It was the big man with the cauliflower ear.
“Hombre,” he said, without preamble, in a hoarse, carrying whisper, “take
an old-timer’s advice: go back—_an’_ set down—you savvy? This place—it
ain’t exactly healthy for a young fellow like you, I’m tellin’ yu! For if
you don’t—”
Annister’s cold stare was followed by his voice, low, incisive:
“You’re blocking the doorway,” he said, with a sort of freezing quiet.
The giant’s hard mouth twisted in a sneer; his great paw reaching upward
with a clawing motion, blunt fingers upon Annister’s shoulder. Then—what
followed happened with the speed of light.
“You can’t get off here, Mister—” the giant was continuing, when the
words were blotted out. Annister’s right fist, behind it the full weight
of his two hundred pounds of iron-hard muscle, curved in a short arc;
there was a spanking thud. The big man, lifted from his feet, crashed
into the front door-frame, slumping face downward in an aimless huddle of
sprawling limbs.
“The hell you say!” grinned Black Steve Annister, leaping lightly to the
platform, with never a backward glance.
Such was the manner of his coming.
_CHAPTER TWO_