Annister returned the look, eye for eye, with a bitter, brooding insolence in 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_?”
It is significant that the conductor was breaking a rigid Company rule by joining Annister in a surreptitious cigar. Now he turned guiltily as a voice sounded from the corridor at his back:
“Ex-cuse me—but could I trouble you for a light?”
The third man, as Annister could see, was tall and heavily built, with broad shoulders and a curiously small head. He had a sharp, acquisitive nose, and a mouth tight-lipped and thin. Annister, versed in reading men, was abruptly conscious of an instinctive and overmastering repugnance. For the man’s eyes were cold and cruel, sleepy-lidded, like a snake’s, roving between Annister and the conductor in a furtive scrutiny.
The match was still alight. Annister, his hand steady as a rock, extended it to the newcomer, who, with an inarticulate grunt, lighted his cigarette, turning, without further speech, backward along the corridor.
Annister waited a moment until he was certain that the man was out of earshot. Then:
“The ‘third light,’ eh?” he murmured, his tone abruptly hardened. “Well—and why shouldn’t I get off?” he asked, grimly.
The conductor for a moment seemed at a loss.
“It’s like this, Mr. Annister,” he said slowly. “I’m a new man on the S. P., but I’ve been hearing a lot—no gossip, you understand—but a conductor hears a good deal, by and large.... And this is a cow country, or it used to be—pretty wild, in spots. Dry Bone, now—they run things pretty much to suit themselves—”
He paused, in a visible embarrassment.
“There’s a party of four back there in the diner—I couldn’t help overhearing what they were saying, and—well—I’m just repeating what they said, and no offense—”
“That’s all right,” interrupted Annister, evenly. “Go on.”
“Why—they said,” continued the conductor, “that you were an Eastern gambler—a—confidence-man—that you were not wanted here in Dry Bone; that it wouldn’t be exactly healthy for you if you stopped off—that’s all. I thought you’d be wanting to know. And if you’ll take my advice, even if you haven’t asked it, I’d say: go on to Tombstone—you can figure it out from there.”
“Thanks,” answered Annister shortly. “I’m getting off—at Dry Bone. How soon are we due?”
“Fifteen minutes,” replied the conductor, glancing at his watch. “But if I was you, sir, I’d stay aboard; it’s a bad crowd there, as I happen to know, and they’ve got a branch of the S. S. S. there, only they work it to suit themselves: tar-and-feathers is just a picnic with that gang; they’re a stemwinding bunch of assassins, I’ll say! So far they’ve operated under cover, mostly, and down here in the Southwest—well—it ain’t a lot different, in some ways, than it was thirty years ago. You’ll see—because they’re—”
“—Southwest of the Law—is that it?” Annister laughed shortly. “Well—much obliged, old-timer,” he said. “I won’t forget it. But I’m getting off.”
The long train was slowing for the station stop. Annister, striding to his seat, got down his heavy bag. For a moment he stood, considering, his gaze, under lowered lids, upon the long coach and its passengers in a swift, squinting appraisal.
The three men were gone.
Somehow, they had found out who he was. Well—that made little difference, he reflected, grimly, except to force matters to a show-down, and the sooner the better.
For there was a man in Dry Bone; Annister had known him in the old time; and it was with this man, unless he was greatly mistaken, that his business had to do.
He would put it to the touch, then; he would sit into the game, and would come heeled, and they could rib up the deck on him, and welcome.
He was turning to the door when, of a sudden, there came to him a second warning: there was a swish of skirts, a sudden odor of violets. Annister had a glimpse of a blonde head beneath a close-fitting toque, as the girl passed him, disappearing in the doorway.
And there, on the flooring at his feet, was a square of white.
Annister, stooping, retrieved it, holding the card upward to the light:
“_Stay on board. Dry Bone is not safe—for you. Be warned—in time._”
There was no signature. Annister made a little clucking sound with his tongue, his face set like flint. He was alone in the car.
The train had stopped now as, bag in hand, he shouldered through the doorway. And then, abruptly, as if materialized out of the air, a face grinned into his, lips drawn backward from the teeth in a soundless snarl. It was the big man with the cauliflower ear.
“Hombre,” he said, without preamble, in a hoarse, carrying whisper, “take an old-timer’s advice: go back—_an’_ set down—you savvy? This place—it ain’t exactly healthy for a young fellow like you, I’m tellin’ yu! For if you don’t—”
Annister’s cold stare was followed by his voice, low, incisive:
“You’re blocking the doorway,” he said, with a sort of freezing quiet.
The giant’s hard mouth twisted in a sneer; his great paw reaching upward with a clawing motion, blunt fingers upon Annister’s shoulder. Then—what followed happened with the speed of light.
“You can’t get off here, Mister—” the giant was continuing, when the words were blotted out. Annister’s right fist, behind it the full weight of his two hundred pounds of iron-hard muscle, curved in a short arc; there was a spanking thud. The big man, lifted from his feet, crashed into the front door-frame, slumping face downward in an aimless huddle of sprawling limbs.
“The hell you say!” grinned Black Steve Annister, leaping lightly to the platform, with never a backward glance.
Such was the manner of his coming.
_CHAPTER TWO_
THE HAND IN THE DARK
The one hotel in Dry Bone was the Mansion House.
Annister, crossing the lobby, was aware of a veiled hostility in the stares directed at him from the group of loungers in the doorway; they gave ground grudgingly, as he came in, with a sort of covert truculence.