He stood a minute sweeping old horizons with his gaze. The station agent nodded. No one had arrived. No one had departed. It was too early in the morning for loungers. A man from Sutherland’s store took up the mail sack, said “hello” to Robin. Robin followed him across the street. He would put up at the hotel. If he went unmolested for the present—and that was likely enough—he would take horse later and ride to the Bar M Bar. If they wanted him they could come and get him. Months in a strange country had taught Robin that he was not the stuff of which an Ishmael is made.
The moon-faced Teutonic host of the Bear Paw House gazed at him blandly over a varnished counter.
“Ach, so,” he said. “You have been away, yes.”
No more. Robin signed the register. From force of old habit he suggested a drink. Host and guest went into the bar. Backed by a mirror that reflected polished glass and decorative bottles a bartender Robin had known for years said, “Hello, kid,” and set out the drinks. Robin grew a little puzzled. This was carrying the normal cow-country nonchalance toward a man who had been in “trouble” to an extreme. He might have been gone only overnight, by their attitude, instead of having jumped the country after killing a well-known man.
He drank, and leaned on the bar, gazing about. A rider loped from somewhere about the town and dismounted with a flourish before the hotel. He stalked in, clanking his spurs. Robin knew him, Jack Boyd of the Block S.
“Hello, old-timer.” He pumped Robin’s hand and slapped him on the back. “Where the hell you been all winter? Have a shot.”
“On the coast,” Robin said briefly.
They drank. Boyd talked. He was a rattle tongue, no sequence to his conversation. Robin’s wonder grew. What ailed them all? Were they all with him, and trying to make him feel at ease, guessing that he had come back to face trial? Men had done that before.
His gaze for a second turned to the open door. Across the street a livery barn bulked large. Its double doors gaped on the brown earth roadway. A man led out a saddled horse, put his foot in the stirrup and swung up.
Robin stared incredulously. He could see the features under the gray Stetson. The flash of silver conchos on saddle, silver inlay on bit and spur, glinting in the sun; Robin saw these and still could not believe.