Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/44

 osity that would sweep across their old leather faces when that potent word flashed in their eyes. It would be worth more drinks than unlimited credit at Eddie Kane's bar.

Kane was in high feather that night, bustling around clearing the tables out of the dining-room, slapping shoulders, shaking hands, passing jokes and laughing in his thigh-slapping loud raucous way, stretching his big flexible fish mouth to let his merriment out, bending and contorting himself as if it gave him a twisting internal agony. He knew Wallace for a harmless good spender, and one of the best callers on the range. It looked like a big night for Eddie Kane. He had them there, and the weather wouldn't let them get away.

There were a lot of strangers in town that night, Wallace remarked as he went pegging around the big room—from group to group looking for familiar faces and not finding any. It didn't look as if it was going to be a very good night for the badge, after all.

There were four glum felowsfellows [sic] standing around the bar, never circulating very, far away from it, who drew Wallace's attention and speculation from the first, giving him a little uneasiness and clouding the natural gayety of his spirits. What troubled him was that he couldn't seem to place the tall slab-sided man with a nine-inch mustache under his long mean nose that seemed to have melted and run down. He was herding the bunch, whoever he was. They must be from the Nation, although Wallace felt sure he had known that crane-shanked man somewhere. The cloud of that perplexing doubt followed Wallace as he went over to the faro table and stood watching the game.