Coming to the bridge he looked casually and from habit along the trail and espied a horseman riding his way. He studied him reflectively a few seconds and then spat vigorously at something moving on one of the bridge planks, much as the practised gun-man snaps without appearing to aim. "Stranger," he affirmed; "Cow-punch," he added; "Old man," he shrewdly surmised, and shook his head; "Dunno 'im" and he glanced at the stain on the plank to see what he had bagged. Among his other pleasing human habits "Boom" used tobacco—as a masticant—there was the evidence of the fact. But he had missed and after a wistful look for something to inspire him to a more successful effort, he shuffled on.
The horseman came at a steady gait, his horse, a likely-looking bay with black spots, getting over the ground considerably faster than the cow-ponies common to the locality; approaching the bridge he was slowed to a walk while his rider took in the town with comprehensive glance. A tall man, lean and grizzled, with the far-seeing, almost vacant eye of the plainsman, there was nothing, to any one but such a student of humanity as "Boom," to indicate his calling, much less his position in it. The felt hat, soft shirt and rough, heavy suit, the trousers pushed into the tops of his boots, were such as a man in the town might wear and many did wear. He forded the stream near the bridge at a walk. Pop Snow, better known as Dirty, cleverly balancing himself within an inch of safety in front of the "I-Call" saloon, greeted him affably: "Come a long way, stranger?" asked Dirty.
"From Wayback," announced the other and paused in interested suspense. Dirty had become seized with some internal convulsion, which momentarily threatened disaster to his balance. His feet swung back and forth in spasmodic jerks, the while his sinful old carcass shook like a man with the Chagres fever. Finally a strangled wheeze burst from his throat and explained the crinkle about his eyes: he was laughing.
"Wayback ain't fur," he declared, licking his lips in anticipation of the kernel of his joke about to come. "You can a'most see it frum here through the bottom uv—"
"How d' you know it ain't?" the horseman abruptly interrupted.
Dirty was hurt. This was not according to Hoyle. Two more words and no self-respecting "gent" could refuse to look toward Wayback through a glass—and certainly not alone. The weather was already too cold to sit fishing for such fish as this; and here was one who had swallowed the bait, rejecting the hook.
"Why, stranger, I been there," explained Dirty, in aggrieved remonstrance.
"How long since you been there? Not since two-at-once, was you? Didn't it used to be at Drigg's Worry? Didn't it?"
Snow lost his balance. He nodded in open-mouthed silence.
"Course it was—at Drigg's Worry—and now it's way back," and with a grim chuckle the stranger pressed in his knees and loped on down the trail to the Sweet-Echo Hotel.