Swingley looked around, just as Hoog came through the doors leading from the hotel office to the restaurant.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “Hoog’s been around all the afternoon. Here I am, Tom,” he called to his retainer. Then, as Hoog beckoned to him, Swingley rose and added:
“I’ve been talkin’ kinda strong, Milt, because I’ve had a little more liquor than common. I ain’t given that way as a rule, so fergit what I’ve been sayin’. Think over that offer I’ve made you. It’s good as gold, and all you’ve got to do is reach out your hand and get a fortune. I’ll have you set up in an ideal grazin’ country, with a smackin’ big herd of your own, inside of a month.”
“I wouldn’t take any range, nor run any cows that came to me by way of you and Hoog, if the cattle were all prize-winners, and the grass on the range was belly-deep, all the year round, and the weather was always June,” replied the Texan.
Swingley turned, as if to make a heated answer, but Hoog’s voice came insistently: “Ace, come here. Here’s news!”
The cattleman joined Hoog, and the two walked through the swinging door together. Every one else had gone out of the room but Bertram. He rose, troubled in mind about the threat Swingley had made concerning Alma. He turned cold at the thought that some harm might come to her.
“I never thought it, not even of such scoundrels as these!” he muttered. “Women have always been safer in the West than anywhere else in the world. Perhaps they’re going to strike at her in some way that I hadn’t thought of.”
With his mind full of plans for the protection of Alma, Bertram left a coin on the table for the waitress and walked slowly toward the hat-rack for his battered, high-crowned felt. He intended to go right to the ranch, to tell the girl that this foolishness on her part had to stop, that her safety was now the prime consideration, and that he himself intended to enlist as a personal guard, until these troubles were over.
The Texan’s reflections were broken in upon by confused voices from the hotel lobby and the barroom just beyond. He stepped through the swinging doors and almost ran into the hotel clerk, white-faced with excitement.
“Ain’t that the limit!” said the clerk, as Bertram stopped him with a query. “Such a kid, too! Didn’t you know about it? Young Jimmy Caldwell was found shot this morning. Another masked-horseman job. Some say the kid’s dead, but the latest word is that he’s alive at Uncle Billy’s place, and that he may live.”