They confronted each other blankly. To Nan’s confusion was added her embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and the front of her silk blouse showed the wilting effect of the rain. In one hand she clutched wet riding-gloves. Her cheeks, either from the cold rain or mental stress, fairly burned, and her eyes, which had seemed when he encountered her, fired with some resolve, changed to an expression almost of dismay.

This was hardly for more than an instant. Then her lips tightened, her eyes dropped, and she took a step to one side to avoid de Spain and enter the gambling-room. He stepped in front of her. She looked up, furious. “What do you mean?” she exclaimed with indignation. “Let me pass.”

The sound of her voice restored his self-possession. He made no move to get out of her way, indeed he rather pointedly continued to obstruct 102 her. “You’ve made a mistake, I think,” he said evenly.

“I have not,” she replied with resentment. “Let me pass.”

“I think you have. You don’t know where you are going,” he persisted, his eyes bent uncompromisingly on hers.

She showed increasing irritation at his attempt to exculpate her. “I know perfectly well where I am going,” she retorted with heat.

“Then you know,” he returned steadily, “that you’ve no business to enter such a place.”

His opposition seemed only to anger her. “I know where I have business. I need no admonitions from you as to what places I enter. You are impertinent, insulting. Let me pass!”

His stubborn opposition showed no signs of weakening before her resolve. “One question,” he said, ignoring her angry words. “Have you ever been in these rooms before?”

He thought she quailed the least bit before his searching look. She even hesitated as to what to say. But if her eyes fell momentarily it was only to collect herself. “Yes,” she answered, looking up unflinchingly.

Her resolute eyes supported her defiant word and openly challenged his interference, but he met her once more quietly. “I am sorry to hear 103 it,” he rejoined. “But that won’t make any difference. You can’t go in to-night.”

“I will go in,” she cried.

“No,” he returned slowly, “you are not going in––not, at least, while I am here.”

They stood immovable. He tried to reason her out of her determination. She resented every word he offered. “You are most insolent,” she exclaimed. “You are interfering in something that is no concern of yours. You have no right to act in this outrageous way. If you don’t stand aside I’ll call for help.”

“Nan!” De Spain spoke her name suddenly and threateningly. His words fell fast, and he checked her for an instant with his vehemence. “We met in the Gap a week ago. I said I was telling you the exact truth. Did I do it?”

“I don’t care what you said or what you did–––”

“Answer me,” he said sharply, “did I tell you the truth?”

“I don’t know or care–––”

“Yes, you do know–––”

“What you say or do–––”

“I told you the truth then, I am telling it now. I will never see you enter a gambling-room as long as I can prevent it. Call for help if you like.”

She looked at him with amazement. She 104 seemed about to speak––to make another protest. Instead, she turned suddenly away, hesitated again, put both her hands to her face, burst into tears, and hurried toward the stairs. De Spain followed her. “Let me take you to where you are going?”

Nan turned on him, her eyes blazing through her tears, with a single, scornful, furious word: “No!” She quickened her step from him in such confusion that she ran into two men just reaching the top of the stairs. They separated with alacrity, and gave her passage. One of the men was Lefever, who, despite his size, was extremely nimble in getting out of her urgent way, and quick in lifting his hat. She fairly raced down the flight of steps, leaving Lefever looking after her in astonishment. He turned to de Spain: “Now, who the deuce was that?”

De Spain ignored his question by asking another: “Did you find him?” Lefever shook his head. “Not a trace; I covered Main Street. I guess Bob was right. Nobody home here, Henry?”

“Nobody we want.”

“Nothing going on?”

“Not a thing. If you will wait here for Bob, I’ll run over to the office and answer those telegrams.”

De Spain started for the stairs. “Henry,” called Lefever, as his companion trotted hastily down, “if you catch up to her, kindly apologize for a fat man.”

But de Spain was balked of an opportunity to follow Nan. In the street he ran into Scott. “Did you get the story?” demanded de Spain.

“Part of it.”

“Was it Sassoon?”

Scott shook his head. “I wish it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Deaf Sandusky.”

“Calabasas?”

Scott nodded. “You must have moved a couple of inches at the right nick, Henry. That man Sandusky,” Bob smiled a sickly smile, “doesn’t miss very often. He was bothered a little by his friends being all around you.”

The two regarded each other for a moment in silence. “Why,” asked de Spain, boiling a little, “should that damned, hulking brute try to blow my head off just now?”

“Only for the good of the order, Henry,” grinned the scout.

“Nice job Jeff has picked out for me,” muttered de Spain grimly, “standing up in these Sleepy Cat barrooms to be shot at.” He drew in a good breath and threw up the wet brim of his 106 hat. “Well, such is life in the high country, I suppose. Some fine day Mr. Sandusky will manage to get me––or I’ll manage to get him––that all depends on how the happening happens. Anyway, Bob, it’s bad luck to miss a man. We’ll hang that much of a handicap on his beef-eating crop. Is he the fellow John calls the butcher?” demanded de Spain.

“That’s what everybody calls him, I guess.”

The two rejoined Lefever at the head of the stairs and the three discussed the news. Even Lefever seemed more serious when he heard the report. Scott, when asked where Sandusky now was, nodded toward the big room in front of them.

Lefever looked toward the gambling-tables. “We’ll go in and look at him.” He turned to Scott to invite his comment on the proposal. “Think twice, John,” suggested the Indian. “If there’s any trouble in a crowd like that, somebody that has no interest in de Spain or Sandusky is pretty sure to get hurt.”

“I don’t mean to start anything,” explained Lefever. “I only want de Spain to look at him.”

But sometimes things start themselves. Lefever found Sandusky at a faro-table. At his side sat his partner, Logan. Three other players, together with the onlookers, and the dealer––whose tumbled hair fell partly over the visor that protected 107 his eyes from the glare of the overhead light––made up the group. The table stood next to that of Tenison, who, white-faced and impassive under the heat and light, still held to his chair.

Lefever took a position at one end of the table, where he faced Sandusky, and de Spain, just behind his shoulder, had a chance to look the two Calabasas men closely over. Sandusky again impressed him as a powerful man, who, beyond an ample stomach, carried his weight without showing it. What de Spain most noted, as it lay on the table, was the size and extreme length of the outlaw’s hand. He had heard of Sandusky’s hand. From the tips of the big fingers to the base of the palm, this right hand, spread over his chips, would cover half again the length of the hand of the average man.

De Spain credited readily the extraordinary stories he had heard of Sandusky’s dexterity with a revolver or a rifle. That he should so lately have missed a shot at so close range was partly explained now that de Spain perceived Sandusky’s small, hard, brown eyes were somewhat unnaturally bright, and that his brows knit every little while in his effort to collect himself. But his stimulation only partly explained the failure; it was notoriously hard to upset the powerful outlaw with alcohol. De Spain noted the coarse, 108 straw-colored hair––plastered recently over the forehead by a barber––the heavy, sandy mustache, freshly waxed by the same hand, the bellicose nostrils of the Roman nose, the broad, split chin, and mean, deep lines of a most unpromising face. Sandusky’s brown shirt sprawled open at the collar, and de Spain remembered again the flashy waistcoat, fastened at the last buttonhole by a cut-glass button.

At Sandusky’s side sat his crony in all important undertakings––a much smaller, sparer man, with aggressive shoulders and restless eyes. Logan was the lookout of the pair, and his roving glance lighted on de Spain before the latter had inspected him more than a moment. He lost no time in beginning on de Spain with an insolent question as to what he was looking at. De Spain, his eye bent steadily on him, answered with a tone neither of apology nor pronounced offense: “I am looking at you.”

Lefever hitched at his trousers cheerily and, stepping away from de Spain, took a position just behind the dealer. “What are you looking at me for?” demanded Logan insolently.

De Spain raised his voice to match exactly the tone of the inquiry. “So I’ll know you next time.”

Logan pushed back his chair. As he turned 109 his legs from under the table to rise, a hand rested on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the brown face and feeble smile of Scott. Logan with his nearest foot kicked Sandusky. The big fellow looked up and around. Either by chance or in following the sound of the last voice, his glance fell on de Spain. He scrutinized for a suspicious instant the burning eyes and the red mark low on the cheek. While he did so––comprehension dawning on him––his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott’s hand rested heavily on him. “What’s the row?” demanded Sandusky in the queer tone of a deaf man. Logan pointed at de Spain. “That Medicine Bend duck wants a fight.”

“With a man, Logan; not with a cub,” retorted de Spain, matching insult with insult.

“Maybe I can do something for you,” interposed Sandusky. His eyes ran like a flash around the table. He saw how Lefever had pre-empted the best place in the room. He looked up and back at the man standing now at his shoulder, and almost between Logan and himself. It was the Indian, Scott. Sandusky felt, as his faculties cleared and arranged themselves every instant, that there was no hurry whatever about lifting 110 his hand; but he could not be faced down without a show of resistance, and he concluded that for this occasion his tongue was the best weapon. “If I can,” he added stiffly, “I’m at your service.”

De Spain made no answer beyond keeping his eyes well on Sandusky’s eyes. Tenison, overhearing the last words, awoke to the situation and rose from his case. He made his way through the crowd around the disputants and brusquely directed the dealer to close the game. While Sandusky was cashing in, Tenison took Logan aside. What Tenison said was not audible, but it sufficed to quiet the little fellow. The only thing further to be settled was as to who should leave the room last, since neither party was willing to go first. Tenison, after a formal conference with Lefever and Logan, offered to take Sandusky and Logan by a private stairway to the billiard-room, while Lefever took de Spain and Scott out by way of the main entrance. This was arranged, and when the railroad men reached the street rain had ceased falling.

Scott warned de Spain to keep within doors, and de Spain promised to do so. But when they left him he started out at once to see whether he could not, by some happy chance, encounter Nan.