“Why do you keep on turning your head a little while you’re eating I’d like to know, Perk—got to seeing things again, like you did once before, I remember?” continued Jack.
“Huh! I’m jest takin’ a peep in that mirror over there partner,” replied Perk in a low tone that had a slight air of mystery about it, Jack imagined.
“Pretty girl this time struck you where your heart is soft, eh, buddy?” Jack inquired with a chuckle.
“Not this time old hoss—take a squint yourself—see them two fellers sittin’ at the corner table, where they c’n watch us?—well, seems like they take a heap o’ pleasure keepin’ tabs on us while we sit here and gobble. I’m wonderin’ who and what they are also why they bother to keep an eye on our actions right along.”
“Yes, I can see them out of the tail of my eye,” Jack told him. “Don’t you remember the pair in the big touring car that kept ducking after us?—I reckon these boys are that same couple. Did you notice them sitting there when we came in?”
“Nothin’ doin’ that way, Boss,” Perk told him with a positive ring to his voice. “I chanced to turn my head a few minutes after we got settled down, an’ they were walkin’ over to that corner like they’d sized up the table as if it suited their plans. Ever since, they’ve kept talkin’ in low tones, an’ watchin’ us like I’ve seen a fox do, hidin’ in the brush an’ waitin’ for a fat young partridge to come close enough for him to make a spring and grab his dinner.”
Jack refused to become flustered, even if Perk showed signs of being annoyed.
“Oh!” he went on to remark casually, “chances are they may be some of those pests of newspaper boys, scenting a scoop of a story for their sensation loving sheets—competition is so keen these days they lie awake nights I’m told, and accept all sorts of chances of being kicked out if only they can get the right sort of stuff to build up into a thriller.”
“Mebbe so, mebbe so,” grumbled the indignant Perk, “but anyhow I don’t like it a bit. That dark-faced guy strikes me as a pretty tough sort o’ scrapper, one I’d hate to smack up against in a dark alley an’ the other ain’t much shakes as a good-looker either. Jack, do you think they know who we are and got some sort o’ grudge against us on ’count o’ the trade we foller, eh, what?”
“Oh! it might be so,” replied the other, “anything is possible and while we’ve been lucky enough to hide our light under a bushel all the time we’ve hung around the Cheyenne airport, we couldn’t expect to keep that game up indefinitely, you understand. After all, we hope to be pulling our freight and slipping out of this burg before long. So we’ll just keep our eyes open for stormy weather and be on our guard.”