It was something of a victory over herself to have succeeded in speaking thus carelessly. For there had been the impulse, a temptation almost, just to stare back at the man as he had stared at her and in silence. Not only was the type physically magnificent; to her it was, like everything about her, new. And that which had held her at first was his eyes. For it is not the part of youth to be stern-eyed; and while this man could not be more than midway between twenty and thirty, his eyes had already acquired the trick of being hard, steely, suggesting relentlessness, stern and quick. Tall, lean-bodied, with big calloused hands, as brown as an Indian, hair and eyes were uncompromisingly black. He belonged to the southwestern wastes.

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 pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 b.u.t.t 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.

"It was the Kid," some one answered, and was continuing, "He says it was self-defense . . ." when Norton cut in bluntly:

"Was Galloway here when it happened?"

"Yes."

"Where's Galloway now?"

It was noteworthy that he asked for Jim Galloway rather than for Kid Rickard.

"In there," they told him, indicating a second card-room adjoining that in which the Las Palmas sheepman lay. Rod Norton, again glancing sharply across the faces confronting him, went to the closed door and set his hand to the k.n.o.b. But Jim Galloway, having desired privacy just now, had locked the door. Norton struck it sharply, commanding:

"Open up, Galloway. It's Norton."

There came the low mutter of a voice hasty and with the quality of stern exhortation, the snap of the lock, and the door was jerked open.

Norton's eyes, probing into every square foot of the chamber, took stock of Jim Galloway, and beyond him of Kid Rickard, slouching forward in a chair and rolling a cigarette.

"h.e.l.lo, Norton," said Galloway tonelessly. "Glad you showed up.

There's been trouble."

A heavy man above the waist-line, thick-shouldered, with large head and bull throat, his muscular torso tapered down to clean-lined hips, his legs of no greater girth than those of the lean-bodied man confronting him, his feet small in glove-fitting boots. His eyes, prominent and full and a clear brown, were a shade too innocent. Chin, jaw, and mouth, the latter full-lipped, were those of strength, smashing power, and a natural cruelty. He was the one man to be found in San Juan who was dressed as the rather fastidiously inclined business men dress in the cities.

"Another man down, Galloway," said Norton with an ominous sternness.

"And in your place. . . How long do you think that you can keep out from under?"

His meaning was plain enough; the men behind him in the barroom listened in att.i.tudes which, varying in other matters, were alike in their tenseness. Galloway, however, staring stonily with eyes not unlike polished agate, so cold and steady were they, gave no sign of taking offense.

"You and I never were friends, Rod Norton," he said, unmoved. "Still that's no reason you should jump me for trouble. Answering your question, I expect to keep out from under just as long as two things remain as they are: first, as long as I play the game square and in the open, next, as long as an overgrown boy holds down the job of sheriff in San Juan."

In Norton's eyes was blazing hatred, in Galloway's mere steady, unwinking boldness.

"You saw the killing?" the sheriff asked curtly.

"Yes," said Galloway.

"The Kid there did it?"

For the first time the man slouching forward in the chair lifted his head. Had a stranger looked in at that moment, curious to see him who had just committed homicide . . . or murder . . . he must have experienced a positive shock. Sullen-eyed, sullen-lipped, the man-killer could not yet have seen the last of his teens. A thin wisp of straw-colored hair across a low, atavistic forehead, unhealthy, yellowish skin, with pale, lack-l.u.s.tre, faded blue eyes, he looked evil and vicious and cruel. One looking from him to Jim Galloway would have suspected that one could be as inhuman as the other, but with the difference that that which was but means to an end with Galloway would be end in itself to Kid Rickard. Something of the primal savage shone in the pale fires of his eyes.

"Yes," retorted the Kid, his surly voice little better than a snarl.

"I got him and be d.a.m.ned to him!"

"Bad luck cursing a dead man, Rickard," said Norton coldly. "What did you kill him for?"

Kid Rickard's tongue ran back and forth between his colorless lips before he replied.

"He tried to get me first," he said defiantly.

"Who saw the shooting?"

"Jim Galloway. And Antone."

Rod Norton grunted his disgust with the situation.

"Give me your gun," he commanded tersely.