“Looking for work?”
He shook his head.
“I’m an outlaw,” he said, with that smiling veracity which sometimes was so immeasurably more deceptive than any untruth. “I steal from the rich and wicked, and give to the poor and virtuous. I’m quite poor and virtuous myself,” he remarked parenthetically. “There has been some talk of making me a Saint.”
She laughed quietly, and left him as a man’s voice called her testily from indoors. Simon took another draught of the cool beer and stretched out his long legs contentedly.
He was in the state of happy vagueness in which an artist may find himself when confronted with a virgin canvas: for a modern privateer who modestly rated himself a supreme technician in the art of living, the situation was almost identical. Anything might take shape — dragons, murder, green hippopotami, bank robbers, damsels in distress, blue moons, or an absconding company promoter. Straight ahead of him as he sat there, if he cared to take that direction, he might come at last to Denver. He could turn east and follow the coast round to New Orleans and Miami. Or, in the fullness of time, he could wake up to the excitements of Chicago, New York, or San Francisco. Or he could stay right where he was with his beer in this forgotten border town of Saddlebag, and as a matter of fact, he was just preparing to discard the last alternative when he was privileged to witness the arrival of Mr Amadeo Urselli.
Urselli came on the bus, which went rattling past in a cloud of dust while Simon sat on over his refreshment. The same cloud of dust, halting to poise itself aridly over the roofs of the houses below, indicated that the bus had stopped somewhere in the village, and a few minutes later Mr Urselli himself came into view, toiling up the road toward the hotel with three or four inquisitive urchins following in his wake and apparently offering comment and counsel. Simon immediately admitted that there was some excuse for them — in his own early youth he would probably have been their ringleader. For Mr Urselli — whose name the Saint had yet to learn — was indeed a remarkable and resplendent sight in that setting.
His gray check suit fitted him so tightly, particularly around the waist, that he would probably have found it necessary to take his coat off in order to tie his shoelaces. His pearly hued felt hat looked as if it had come straight from a shop window; his tie had the gorgeous flamboyance of a tropical sunset; the pigskin suitcase which he carried in his right hand shone with a costly luster. The gesticulations which he made with his left hand in the attempt to rid himself of his juvenile escort flashed iridescent gleams of jewelry on his fingers.
He crested the slope leading up to the veranda and dumped his bag with a sigh. The escort gathered round him in an admiring circle while he mopped his brow with a large silk handkerchief.
“Say, will you sons of bandmasters scram?” he rasped — not, Simon gathered, for anything like the first time.
“Give them their fun, brother,” murmured the Saint. “They don’t get many chances to see the world.”