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Page 9
These things she noted, and that his face was drawn and weary, that
about his left hand was tied a handkerchief, hinting at a minor cut,
that his horse looked as travel-worn as himself.
"One doesn't see strangers often around San Juan," he explained. "As
for a girl . . . Well, I never made a mistake like this before. I'll
have to look out." The muscles of the tired face softened a little,
into his eyes came a quick light that was good to see, for an instant
masking their habitual sternness. "If you'll excuse me again, and if
you don't know a whole lot about this country . . ." He paused to
measure her sweepingly, seemed satisfied, and concluded: "I wouldn't
go out all alone like this; especially after sundown. We're a rather
tough lot, you know. Good-by."
He lifted his hat again, loosened his horse's reins, and passed by her.
Just as she had expected, just as she had desired. And yet, with his
dusty back turned upon her, she experienced a sudden return of her
loneliness. Would she ever look into the eyes of a friend again?
Could she ever actually accomplish what she had set out to accomplish;
make San Juan a home?
Her eyes followed him, frankly admiring now; so she might have looked
at any other of nature's triumphant creations. Then, before he had
gone a score of yards, she saw how a little tightening of his horse's
reins had brought the big brute down from a swinging gallop to a dead
standstill. The bell was tolling again.
Again he was calling to her, again, swinging about, he had ridden to
her side. Now his voice like his eyes, was ominously stern.
"Who is it?" he demanded.
"I don't know," she told him, marvelling at the look on his face. His
emotion was purely one of anger, mounting anger that a man was dead?
"The man who rings the bells told me that he thought it must be a
sheepman from Las Palmas. He went to see. . . . I didn't wait. . . ."
Nor did this man wait now. Again he had wheeled; now he was racing
along the arroyo, urging a tired horse that he might lose no
unnecessary handful of moments. And as he went she heard him curse
savagely under his breath and knew that he had forgotten her in the
thoughts which had been released by the dull booming of a bell.
CHAPTER III
A MAN'S BOOTS
In the bar at the Casa Blanca, a long, wide room, low-ceilinged and
with cool, sprinkled floor, a score of men had congregated. For the
most part they were silent, content to look at the signs left by the
recent shooting and to have what scraps of explanation were vouchsafed
them. And these were meagre enough. The man who had done the shooting
was sullen and self-contained. The dead man . . . it was the sheepman
from Las Palmas . . . lay in an adjoining card-room, stark under the
blanket which the large hands of Jim Galloway had drawn over him.
When the clatter of hoofs rang out in the street a couple of men went
to the door. Coming back, "It is the sheriff," they said.
Roderick Norton, entering swiftly, his spurs dragging and jangling,
swept the faces in the room with eyes which had in them none of that
human glint of good-will which the girl at the arroyo had glimpsed in
them. Again they were steely, angry, bespeaking both threat and
suspicion.
"Who is it this time?" he demanded sharply.
"Bisbee, from Las Palmas," they told him.
"Who did it?" came the quick question. And then, before an answer
could come, his voice ringing with the anger in it: "Antone or Kid
Rickard? Which one?"
He had shifted his rifle so that it was caught up under his left arm.
His right hand, frank and unhidden, rested upon the butt of the
heavy-caliber revolver sagging from his belt. Standing just within the
room, he had stepped to one side of the doorway so that the wall was at
his back.
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