The outfit camped where the level of the Prairie pitched down to the sagebrush flats. Robin went on first guard with the lights of Big Sandy glimmering two miles distant and five hundred feet below. East, west, north, Lonesome Prairie spread its night-shrouded breadth, an enormous, uninhabited triangle of grassland a hundred miles on each side, with a railway crossing its middle and scarcely a dwelling in all those miles except the dull red section houses where the railroad laborers lived.
Robin jogged his two hours and a half, meeting and passing the other rider, around and around the outer edge of a herd that slept as peacefully as a babe in the cradle, a vast amorphous blot on the shrouded plain. They crooned chanty songs as they rode, not because they loved singing well enough to drone interminable ditties for their hours on watch, but because a rider moving silently in the dark might sneeze, flap a slicker, his horse might stumble—and at a strange noise breaking the night silence that herd would jump the bed-ground as one, in a panic, making the earth shake with the thunder of their flight. So they sang, crooned rather. And the relief coming on at eleven o’clock came droning or whistling to the herd.
“All right. You got ’em. See that you keep ’em.” Robin and his mate jocularly greeted the relief, and departed.
Robin was paired for night work with Tex Matthews, a middle-aged Texan, a quiet, soft-voiced man whose gentle ways were a serviceable mask for a rider who had seen a good deal of wild west in his time. They turned toward camp. Matthews rode a little way, turned to look into the flat below. In the dark and the silence a night breeze sighed, as if the range breathed audibly. The Texan stared at the town lights. Half the Block S crew had ridden in when first guard was set. Sometime before dawn they would come galloping back.
“They’ll be gettin’ action down there, I expect,” he murmured.
“Let’s ride in,” Robin suggested. “I don’t want to sleep, nohow.”
They swung their horses about. In fifteen minutes they were dismounting before the Silver Dollar. That particular house was the favorite resort of the Block S. They patronized all saloons without favor, as a rule, but the Silver Dollar was roomy, clean, it had a billiard table and comfortable chairs. More important, it was conducted by a genial soul who, having been a range-rider himself, knew and welcomed cow-punchers regardless of whether or not they had money to spend over his bar.
Now Robin and Matthews had neither expectation nor purpose beyond a natural hankering for the glow of bright lights, a drink or two—a little diversion, so to speak. They would ordinarily have found some of the outfit, perhaps have played stud poker an hour or two, taken a stirrup cup and departed.
But once inside the door Robin Tyler had a strange intuition of something in the air. Mark Steele leaned on one end of the bar. Three or four Block S men stood or lounged about. A couple of strangers were present. And slumped in a chair against the farther wall sat Dan Mayne. His chin was sunk on his breast. His dispirited mustache drooped more dispiritedly than ever. But he was neither asleep nor in a stupor. Mark Steele regarded him with a smile that was a mixture of contempt and calculation.
“Hello cowboys,” Steele greeted the two. “Couldn’t resist temptation eh? C’mon. Have a drink. Ho, Dan!”