some he read fear; some were inscrutable; in others flickered a sinister mockery.
'The men who killed Jim Grimes are in this saloon,' he said finally. 'Some of you are the murderers.' He was careful not to let his eyes single out anyone when he spoke; they swept the whole assemblage.
'I've been expecting this. Things have been getting a little too hot for the robbers and murderers who have been terrorizing this camp, so they've started shooting my deputies in the back. I suppose you'll try to kill me, next. Well, I want to tell you sneaking rats, whoever you are, that I'm ready for you, any time.'
He fell silent, his rangy frame tense, his eyes burning with watchful alertness. None moved. The men along the bar might have been figures cut from stone.
He relaxed and shoved his gun into its scabbard; a sneer twisted his lips.
'I know your breed. You won't shoot a man unless his back is toward you. Forty men have been murdered in the vicinity of this camp within the last year, and not one had a chance to defend himself.
'Maybe this killing is an ultimatum to me. All right; I've got an answer ready: I've got a new deputy, and you won't find him so easy as Grimes. I'm fighting fire with fire from here on. I'm riding out of the Gulch early in the morning, and when I come back, I'll have a man with me. A gunfighter from Texas!'
He paused to let this information sink in, and laughed grimly at the furtive glances that darted from man to man.
'You'll find him no lamb,' he predicted vindictively. 'He was too wild for the country where gun-throwing was invented. What he did down there is none of my business. What he'll do here is what counts. And all I ask is that the men who murdered Grimes here, try that same trick on this Texan.
'Another thing, on my own account. I'm meeting this man at Ogalala Spring tomorrow morning. I'll be riding out alone, at dawn. If anybody wants to try to waylay me, let him make his plans now! I'll follow the open trail, and anyone who has any business with me will find me ready.'
And turning his trimly-tailored back scornfully on the throng at the bar, the sheriff of Whapeton strode from the saloon.
* * *
Ten miles east of Whapeton a man squatted on his heels, frying strips of deer meat over a tiny fire. The sun was just coming up. A short distance away a rangy mustang nibbled at the wiry grass that grew sparsely between broken rocks. The man had camped there that night, but his saddle and blanket were hidden back in the bushes. That fact showed him to be a man of wary nature. No one following the trail that led past Ogalala Spring could have seen him as he slept among the bushes. Now, in full daylight, he was making no attempt to conceal his presence.
The man was tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, lean-hipped, like one who had spent his life in the saddle. His unruly black hair matched a face burned dark by the sun, but his eyes were a burning blue. Low on either hip the black butt of a heavy Colt jutted from a worn black leather scabbard. These guns seemed as much part of the man as his eyes or his hands. He had worn them so constantly and so long that their association was as natural as the use of his limbs.
As he fried his meat and watched his coffee boiling in a battered old pot, his gaze darted continually eastward where the trail crossed a wide open space before it vanished among the thickets of a broken hill country. Westward the trail mounted a gentle slope and quickly disappeared among trees and bushes that crowded up within a few yards of the spring. But it was always eastward that the man looked.
When a rider emerged from the thickets to the east, the man at the spring set aside the skillet with its sizzling meat strips, and picked up his rifle--a long range Sharps .50. His eyes narrowed with satisfaction. He did not rise, but remained on one knee, the rifle resting negligently in his hands, the muzzle tilted upward, not aimed.
The rider came straight on, and the man at the spring watched him from under the brim of his hat. Only when the stranger pulled up a few yards away did the first man lift his head and give the other a full view of his face.
The horseman was a supple youth of medium height, and his hat did not conceal the fact that his hair was yellow and curly. His wide eyes were ingenuous, and an infectious smile curved his lips. There was no rifle under his knee, but an ivory-butted .45 hung low at his right hip.
His expression as he saw the other man's face gave no hint to his reaction, except for a slight, momentary contraction of the muscles that control the eyes--a movement involuntary and all but uncontrollable. Then he grinned broadly, and hailed:
'That meat smells prime, stranger!'
'Light and help me with it,' invited the other instantly. 'Coffee, too, if you don't mind drinkin' out of the pot.'
He laid aside the rifle as the other swung from his saddle. The blond youngster threw his reins over the horse's head, fumbled in his blanket roll and drew out a battered tin cup. Holding this in his right hand he approached the fire with the rolling gait of a man born to a horse.
'I ain't et my breakfast,' he admitted. 'Camped down the trail a piece last night, and come on up here early to meet a man. Thought you was the hombre till you looked up. Kinda startled me,' he added frankly. He sat down opposite the taller man, who shoved the skillet and coffee pot toward him. The tall man moved both these utensils with his left hand. His right rested lightly and apparently casually on his right thigh.
The youth filled his tin cup, drank the black, unsweetened coffee with evident enjoyment, and filled the cup again. He picked out pieces of the cooling meat with his fingers--and he was careful to use only his left hand for that part of the breakfast that would leave grease on his fingers. But he used his right hand for pouring coffee and holding the cup to his lips. He did not seem to notice the position of the other's right hand.
'Name's Glanton,' he confided. 'Billy Glanton. Texas. Guadalupe country. Went up the trail with a herd of mossy horns, went broke buckin' faro in Hayes City, and headed west lookin' for gold. Hell of a prospector I turned out to be! Now I'm lookin' for a job, and the man I was goin' to meet here said he had one for me. If I read your marks right you're a Texan, too?'
The last sentence was more a statement than a question.
'That's my brand,' grunted the other. 'Name's O'Donnell. Pecos River country, originally.'
His statement, like that of Glanton's, was indefinite. Both the Pecos and the Guadalupe cover considerable areas of territory. But Glanton grinned boyishly and stuck out his hand.
'Shake!' he cried. 'I'm glad to meet an hombre from my home state, even if our stampin' grounds down there are a right smart piece apart!'
Their hands met and locked briefly--brown, sinewy hands that had never worn gloves, and that gripped with the abrupt tension of steel springs.
The handshake seemed to relax O'Donnell. When he poured out another cup of coffee he held the cup in one hand and the pot in the other, instead of setting the cup on the ground beside him and pouring with his left hand.
'I've been in California,' he volunteered. 'Drifted back on this side of the mountains a month ago. Been in Whapeton for the last few weeks, but gold huntin' ain't my style. I'm a vaquero. Never should have tried to be anything else. I'm headin' back for Texas.'
'Why don't you try Kansas?' asked Glanton. 'It's fillin' up with Texas men, bringin' cattle up the trail to stock the ranges. Within a year they'll be drivin' 'em into Wyoming and Montana.'
'Maybe I might.' O'Donnell lifted the coffee cup absently. He held it in his left hand, and his right lay in his lap, almost touching the big black pistol butt. But the tension was gone out of his frame. He seemed relaxed, absorbed in what Glanton was saying. The use of his left hand and the position of his right seemed mechanical, merely an unconscious habit.
'It's a great country,' declared Glanton, lowering his head to conceal the momentary and uncontrollable flicker of triumph in his eyes. 'Fine ranges. Towns springin' up wherever the railroad touches.
'Everybody gettin' rich on Texas beef. Talkin' about 'cattle kings'! Wish I could have knowed this beef boom was comin' when I was a kid! I'd have rounded up about fifty thousand of them maverick steers that was roamin' loose all over lower Texas, and put me a brand on 'em, and saved 'em for the market!' He laughed at his own conceit.
'They wasn't worth six bits a head then,' he added, as men in making small talk will state a fact well known to everyone. 'Now twenty dollars a head ain't the top price.'
He emptied his cup and set it on the ground near his right hip. His easy flow of speech flowed on--but the natural movement of his hand away from the cup turned into a blur of speed that flicked the heavy gun from its
