Smoke of the .45. Harry Sinclair Drago

scarin’ me thataway. It’s Crosbie Traynor.”

      “And him dead these twenty years?”

      “I thought he was dead. Men left on the Painted Desert without water and no food don’t come back. He’s done it, though! It’s him. Still wearin’ one of my old hats—the one with that Moqui horsehair band. You remember—had a gold snake luck piece snapped on to the band. I tell you he looks like the livin’ spit of the way he did that night down on the Little Colorado.”

      His companion said nothing, but the sweat of fear had broken on his forehead. Crosbie Traynor’s return to the land of living men was as ominous as those black clouds gathering to the north. Death walked in the air.

      The little schemes, the plotting, the treachery of twenty years now crumbled to ruins! Not for a second was it to be supposed that Traynor had come to Standing Rock by accident. The man’s country lay far to the south, hundreds of miles. Yes, it was his way to ferret them out, to hang on, drifting from town to town until he tracked them down.

      “Damn you for a bungling fool!” cursed the brooding one. The man from the hotel sank lower into his chair, spineless, impotent in the face of that ghost-man’s visit. He raised his hands to shield his eyes from his companion’s wrath as the other went on:

      “A bungling, white-livered fool! That’s what you are! Now we’ll be lucky if our necks don’t get stretched.”

      “What you goin’ to do?”

      “Do?” The man got to his feet and shook his fist in his visitor’s face. “I’m going to do what you tried to do. I’m going to get Traynor before he gets me. Is that plain enough for you?”

      “You—you goin’ to kill him?”

      “Oh, bah!” the other hurled back with fine contempt. “That scares you, huh? Where’ll you be if he ever gets wind of you? That makes you shiver, eh? Well, you get this idea under your hat and let it stick there—you’re taking orders from me. ‘Cross’ Traynor is going to be erased!”

CHAPTER II

      THE RED HAND

      Darkness came, bringing the day’s work to an end. The commotion on the wool platform ceased. Down the tracks from the direction of the shipping pens came the Diamond-Bar boys. They had just put ten hours of hard work behind them, but one would not have guessed it from their present vociferousness.

      Johnny Allerdyce, or rather Johnny Dice—to give him what he called his “nom devoid”—led the column headed for the Palace. He was walking the ties, taking three of them at a step. Behind him some fifteen of his pals were strung out at varying intervals.

      Johnny’s legs were pronouncedly bowed from his life in a saddle, and this long-stepping walk, or half run, only accentuated his deformity. Big hat flapping in the wind, the tails of his neckerchief flattening out behind him, made him seem grotesque. But there was action in every line of him, untouched vitality. Freckled face, untamed hair of flaming hue—they were fit companions for his dancing, mischievous eyes.

      “Hi, hi, you gamblin’ fool,” some one in back of him yelled. “I hope you stub your toe and break yore damned haid. You let me know how the town is when you git there!”

      “You tell him, cowboy!” Johnny flung over his shoulder. “I crave food and pleasure!”

      Laughter of marked contempt greeted this retort. Somebody cried: “Liar!” Johnny was strictly a night-blooming plant; this talk of food was just talk.

      At the hotel, Vin was going about lighting the lamps. No one ever locked a door. In turn, he left a light in Crosbie Traynor’s room. The sleeper had not moved. Vin surveyed him calmly, wondering if he had ever seen the man before. Without his hat, Traynor seemed older. Vincenzo shrugged his shoulders as he turned away. The man was a total stranger to him. And still this mysterious señor aroused the Basque’s curiosity.

      Vin had been on the desert too long not to have learned the wisdom of keeping his own counsel; but he took much pleasure from building romantic adventures around his guests. Some señors there had been who were in great haste. He had sped them on their way. But they were not forgotten.

      This man was in no seeming haste, but something about him sent delicious little chills racing up and down Vin’s spine. He would have spent more time on the matter had not Scanlon called to him at the moment. Johnny and the other Diamond-Bar warriors had arrived. In this democratic inn the proprietors—or to be exact, one of them—served the meals. His name was not Scanlon, that individual confining his efforts to the well-known cash register and the dealing of much poker.

      Jackson Kent, the big boss of the Diamond-Bar, came in before supper was over. He was a hawk-faced old man, silent as a rule. Hobe Ferris, his foreman, was with him. Pushing back the knife and fork set before him, the old man began stacking five, ten, and twenty dollar gold pieces into neat little piles. This was pay night.

      Some of the boys had not drawn a cent in three months. Hobe called off their names and the amounts due, and old man Kent counted it out to them as they filed past. The owner of the Diamond-Bar caressed his little stacks of gold pieces with his fingers as the piles grew smaller and smaller. He caught Scanlon eyeing him.

      “Might jest as well be payin’ him,” he muttered to Hobe, shaking his head regretfully. “What a waste of good money this is,” he added. “Won’t a one of ’em have a cent left time they git back to the ranch.”

      “You ain’t includin’ Johnny in that remark, be you?” Hobe demanded. “Ain’t one of the boys but owes him plenty cash right now. He’ll git more of their jack tonight.”

      “Huh!” the old man grunted. “Huh!” His contempt for Johnny’s genius was of long standing. “Somebody’ll git him jest like he gits these fools. Gamblin’s made a smart aleck out of him. Always figurin’ how things is goin’ to break; talkin’ his head off about the laws of chance. Jest spoiled a good hand, that’s all gamblin’s done to Johnny Dice. His mind ain’t on cattle no more. Damn it, Hobe, half the time I believe he don’t know whether he’s runnin’ sheep or steers.”

      Hobe was a good foreman, so he wisely agreed with the old man. He had been doing this for ten years; a time in which the Diamond-Bar had prospered.

      “Don’t let ’em git too drunk, Hobe,” Kent cautioned as he began his supper. “We got work to do tomorrow mornin’. The Lawrence boys will be here with their stuff by noon. We’ve got to git out of the way.”

      Hobe nodded as he strolled to the bar. “We’ll be in the clear, I reckon,” he drawled. “Hain’t had no trouble yit.”

      Hobe Ferris had long since forgotten the knack of smiling, but he almost remembered it as he thought of the old man’s concern for his men.

      “Old age certainly uses y’u up, don’t it?” he mused. “Yes, sir! Think of him worryin’ thataway. If this keeps up, Miss Molly’ll be bossin’ the brand ’fore long.”

      Ferris looked about for Johnny, but he and his pal, Tony Madeiras, had gone down the street. There were other places of chance in Standing Rock, and wise Johnny was off to a picking.

      Stuffy Tyler, who had raced through his supper and who had been busy ever since refreshing himself at the bar, greeted his foreman with a hearty smack on the back.

      “Y’u again?” Hobe queried.

      “Little me, Hobe.”

      And then, without further ado, he roared that old range song, the first two lines of which run:

      “Oh, no, Jenny!

      What would yore father say?”

      Hobe knew what father said, and he was not minded to listen to his complaint this night. A wooden awning stretched across the walk in front of the hotel. There, the foreman found refuge from Stuffy’s bawling.

      The storm