Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/224

 fore to-day but I’ve heard many a bunkhouse yarn from men who have seen him work. I heard he turned killer on Wind River and that a wolfer trailed him clear back to the BarT ranch on the Greybull and that they shot him there. It’s my belief that they didn’t shoot deep enough and that he got away. That lobo look; that wolf droop at his hips and that sliding gait of his; those yellow eyes and the way he handles stock. You say yourself he’s a one man dog. There’s only one like that. I’ll bet my spurs he’s the champion of the Greybull—Flash.”

“You’ve guessed it,” said Moran. “Funny how the news filters into an out-of-the-way place like Vermont.”

“It is for a fact,” the other admitted.

Moran’s mind had been working on a solution of the reason for presence here of these eight men under pretense of hunting bear and he thought he had fathomed it at last.

“I’m going to ask you one question, Vermont,” he said.

The man answered readily to the name; thus are new nicknames easily acquired in this land of loose nomenclature.

“I’ll answer it,” he promised.