Page:Weird Tales v01n04 (1923-06).djvu/34

Rh open-and-shut proposition, I'll tell a man!"

The laugh that followed had come to the man in the black Stetson with a curious, grating note:

"Sure-thing gamblers; con-men—it's a regular crook's paradise And there's that fellow, Rook "

The eyes of the man in the black Stetson narrowed abruptly at the corners; for a moment, as a curtain is drawn: swiftly from right to left, something arose to peer out of those eyes, glowing, deep-down, like a still, festering flame. But it was gone upon the instant—

" And there's that fellow, Rook " the man had said.

Of a sudden he had stopped short as if he had been: muzzled; presently his voice had come again, dry, matter-of-fact:

"I'll see that raise, Carpenter, and it’ll cost you just twenty iron men to call"

Plainly, that name, "Rook," had been taboo; the speaker had been silently reminded of it.

The man in the black Stetson—he had been known as Black Steve Annister in the back blocks at Wooloomooloof before he had made of that name a by-word in the honkatonks and the gambling-hells from San Francisco northward to the Wind River country, and beyond it—Black Steve Annister was sitting upright now, but he had retired behind a wide-spread copy of the Durango County Gazette. He was not reading it, however, although he was looking through it—at the three men just across the aisle, studying them through the pin-pricks he had made in it, himself unseen.

Annister had arrived in New York only the week previous from Sourabaya, Java, and he had not waited even overnight before he had begun the long journey, broken at Washington for half a day, which had taken him now half way southwestward across the State of Texas, Presently the long train would cross the Pecos, beyond it the serrated ramparts of the Guadalupes; Dry Bone was just between.

Annister, studying the men, frowned abruptly, yawning behind his hand. Two of the men he put down for ranchers—sheep men, probably; there was about them none of the glamor of that West which lingers even now in the person of a cattleman; and these men were negligible.

But the third man would have been noticeable anywhere. He was a bull's bulk of a man, hard-featured, mouth a straight gash above a heavy chin barbered to the blood; the observer across the aisle would have-said "cowman," and registered a bull's eye with it, point-blank.

The two who were with him, evidently with interests in common, were scarcely friendly with the cowman, if such he was; it was evident in their attitude, the constraint which had fallen upon them following that mention of "Rook."

But the man in the black Stetson continued to study the big fellow through the holes in his newspaper: the hard face, tanned a rich saddle color; the nose, flattened to a smudge of flaring nostril; the cauliflower ear.

He had heard the name, "Ellison" once or twice; somewhere, deep down, it had set vibrating a chord of memory that brought with it, incongruously enough, an altogether different setting: a padded ring under twin, blazing arcs; the thud and shuffle of sliding feet; a man, huge, bruitish, broad, fists like stone mauls, yet, for all his bulk, a very eat for quickness

He put down his paper now—to find those hard eyes boring into his. Ellison, or whatever the man's name was, had shifted in his seat; the glance that he turned now upon the stranger in the black Stetson was searching, probing. There was a truculence in it, a fierce, bright, avid staring, like an animal's, savage in its very directness, like a challenge—which in effect it was.

Annister returned the look, eye for eye, with a bitter, brooding insolence which there was apparent a certain mockery, his eyes in a veiled gleaming, like the sun on water. For a long moment their glances engaged, in a silent duel, like rapier points; then the giant with the cauliflower ear vented a sound between a grunt and a snort, turning to the window, his gaze outward across the flat levels of the adjacent prairie in a kind of sightless stare.

There had been no reason in it—no logic—that Annister could see, but for the moment he had owned to a sudden sense of crisis; it had seemed to him for a moment that in the giant's eyes there had been almost a knowing, an understanding look. But the man could have no business with him—of that he was certain.

The fellow was just a bully, probably, a big, hulking lump of beef who resented, as it might chance, Annister's undeniably cosmopolitan air; the sardonic flicker in the gray-green eyes; the cool, contemptuous appraisal. But, after all, it had been the giant who had begun it.

And yet, somehow, Annister was thinking that he had seen him before, and, oddly, illogically enough, he found himself liking the man—why, he could not have told.

Black Steve Annister, "with the heart of a cougar and the conscience of a wolf," as a disgruntled enemy had at one time phrased it, could have sat into that game had he been so minded, with profit to himself, pecuniary and otherwise, but he had preferred to play the hand that had been dealt him. Later, at Dry Bone, that would be another matter.

Now, his lean, strong, hawklike face darkened abruptly with the thought behind his eyes, and then—for Annister had eyes in the back of his head—he was suddenly aware that the conductor was advancing along the aisle.

The three men opposite had ceased their conversation as if at an order. Two or three of the remaining passengers stared curiously, after the manner of their kind (they were small tradesmen, merchants, going on beyond the border to Tucson), as the conductor halted at Annister’s elbow.

"Excuse me, Mister—Mister—" he began.

"—Annister!" The answer was low, even, controlled, but beneath the silken tone there ran a hint of iron.

"Mister Annister," repeated the conductor. "Will you—just a moment, please?"

Annister rose, following the official outward toward the vestibule. And as he went he could feel those eyes, avid, curious, boring into his back. He permitted himself the ghost of a cold grin as the conductor, turning in the entry, laid a respectful hand upon his sleeve.

"I'm—sorry, sir," he said, low. "You getting off at-Dry Bone, aren't you?"

The words were less a question than a statement of fact. Annister nodded. The conductor, a tall, bronzed man who might have been an old-time line rider, shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Then he said, his tone even, matter-of-fact:

"I—wouldn't—if I was you."

Annister stared. Then, producing his cigar-case, lighting a long, black invincible, the twin to which the conductor had selected, he remarked casually:

"They're good cigars In the trenches we smoked 'Woodbines'—a cross between tar-heel and alfalfa; you have a lot of alfalfa out here, eh? And the 'third light,' as we used to call it, most always got his—three men lighting up from the same match, you know."

His tone abruptly hardened; the glance that he turned upon the conductor now was like a lance of flame.

"Well—I'm not superstitious—but—will you tell me why?"