Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/115

 yellow-brown skin, such as marks the Mexican mestizo, or person of mixed breed. It is as if these mixtures fire in resentment always at the world's knowledge of their baseness, which nature stamps upon them in its uncompromising way. Barrett saw that the thumb of the man's left hand was gone.

He looked at the fellow curiously, feigning a surprise that he did not feel, to see a guest in camp display such nervous hostility. He nodded, with a short word of greeting, passing over the fellow's act as if he had not noted it, but careful to leave his gun hand free as he reached for a basin. The half-breed grinned, rolling back his thick, blue lips from great yellow, horse-like teeth. But there was no friendly approach in his greasy, congested small eyes, padded in the puffed flesh of excesses and debaucheries.

A diversion in the arrival of Dale Findlay and two cowboys relieved the strain of the situation for Barrett, who was at the last stand of desperation, in truth, to know what tack to take. Manuel's warning, taken with the stranger's nervous, hostile watchfulness, convinced him that—he was about to be called upon to pay for the rustler's death. What to do save watch and wait he did not know. He welcomed the arrival of the superintendent, little as he liked him, greatly as he resented the fellow's insolent behavior at their first meeting.

Findlay had not been at Eagle Rock camp since the morning he rode away with Nearing, a matter of ten days past. Now, as he dismounted before the cabin, his two companions having stopped at the corral, the stranger went to meet him, a certain respect in his bear-