Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/77

 Texas glanced up from the contemplation of a match that had failed to ignite against the telegraph-pole, with a look in his face as if he had been philosophizing on its weakness, and drawing comparisons between it and the failure of a friend in the hour of necessity.

"Were you addressin' me, sir?" he asked.

"I was addressin' you, pardner. You take to the middle of the road and trot ahead of us, and you make a start right now!"

Texas tried the match again, looked at the head of it with a little cloud as of sorrow and disappointment in his face, as if the undoubted discovery of its unworthiness had hurt him deeply. He stood a moment, the unlit cigarette in his lips, his head bent a trifle, as if thinking more of the match than the man.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm not ready to leave this evenin'."

Indifferent, unmoved, as he seemed, Texas was set like a hair-trigger, watching every man of them, the match in his fingers, his hand just a few inches above the butt of his gun.

Heads were put cautiously around corners of buildings and out of doors to investigate this delay and silence in the street. The spokesman of the gunners' committee came half a step nearer.

It was not meant that Texas should take the