“Not right around here. Sometimes the prospectors’ll come through. But they’ll go anywhere.”
He had a slow, rather musical drawl, which to a sensitive ear was the same as a lapel badge would have been to the eye.
“You wouldn’t be a Texan, I suppose,” said the Saint.
“Yes, sir.” Reefe poured Bull Durham into a gutter of thin paper and spread it with his forefingers. “I heard Miss Jean say you worked in the Panhandle yourself.”
“A long time ago.”
The foreman’s deft fingers shaped and rolled. He sealed the cigarette with a flick of his tongue, and said, “Smoke?”
The sack of Bull Durham landed in Simon’s lap. Lazily Simon slid a paper out of the folder, curved it with thumb and fingers of one hand, poured tobacco, and rolled the cigarette while his other hand pulled the string of the sack against his teeth and tossed it back. His eyes met Reefe’s tranquilly over the match that the foreman leaned across with.
Neither of the Morlands would have realised that two men had measured each other, with challenge and answer, like two proud animals. And yet Jean Morland was very clearly a part of that watchful speculation, for Simon had seen something more in Hank Reefe’s manner towards her than the strictly dutiful respect to which her position as the boss’s daughter entitled her.
Reefe dragged on his own cigarette with an expressionless face, and said idly, “I was raised right around Hereford. Worked around two or three ranches up there ’fore I came west.” Smoke curled in the lamplight as he let it out through his nostrils. “There sure used to be some interestin’ characters around there.”
“Quite a few,” said the Saint.