That was that. He got away from the barroom in a few minutes.
Wells kept eying him. So did Walters. He felt that they were discussing him in discreet undertones. They did not include him in their conversation after that drink. Once out of there, Rock set about his business. He had no desire to paint the town. He went seeking casual labor. Luck rode with him. Within an hour he had located and hired two men—the only two souls in Fort Benton, he discovered, who needed jobs. He went back to the Grand Union for supper. In the dining room he saw Wells and Walters still together, seated at a table by themselves. He observed them later in the lobby, deep in cushioned chairs, cigars jutting rakishly from their lips.
Early in the evening Rock went up to his room. He had left the Marias at sunrise, and had jolted forty miles in a dead-axle wagon. He would hit the trail early in the morning, with the hay diggers, before they changed their mind and hired themselves to some one else. He needed sleep.
But he couldn’t sleep. The imps of unrest propped his eyelids open. An hour of wakefulness made him fretful. His mind questioned ceaselessly. Could a man like Buck Walters deliberately set out to destroy another man merely because he was a rival for a girl’s capricious affection? It didn’t seem incentive enough. A man with as much on his hands as Walters, could scarcely afford petty feuds like that. Still——
Rock dressed again, drew on his boots, and tucked his gun inside the waistband of his trousers. He would stroll around Fort Benton for an hour or so. By that time he would be able to sleep.
A battery of lighted windows faced the Missouri. Saloons with quaint names, “Last Chance,” “The Eldorado,” “Cowboy’s Retreat,” the “Bucket of Blood.” They never closed. They were the day-and-night clubs of frontier citizens. Business did not thrive in all at once. It ebbed and flowed, as the tides of convivial fancy dictated. In one or two the bartender polished glasses industriously, while house dealers sat patiently playing solitaire on their idle gambling layouts. But in others there were happy gatherings, with faro and poker and crap games in full swing. Rock visited them all and chanced a dollar or two here and there. Eventually he retraced his steps toward the hotel.
In the glow of lamplight from the last saloon on the western end of the row, just where he had to cross the street to the Grand Union, sitting in its patch of grass and flanked by a few gnarly cottonwoods, Rock met Buck Walters and Dave Wells.
He nodded and passed them. A little prickly sensation troubled the back of his neck. It startled Rock, that involuntary sensation. Nervous about showing his back to a potential enemy? Nothing less. The realization almost amused Rock. Absurd! Nobody would shoot him down on a lighted street. Yet it was a curious feeling. Expectancy, a sense of danger, a conscious irritation at these psychological absurdities. He was not surprised when a voice behind him peremptorily called:
“Hey, Martin!”