The Red Valley stage, rocking and swaying, bowled down the steep, rutty road and came to a jarring halt before the “Silver Star” amid a swirling, scurrying cloud of dust. For a second or two it paused, with horses panting. Then old Bailey, the driver, shouted and cracked his whip, the four horses strained forward, and the next minute the lumbering vehicle careened around a bend in the road and disappeared into the forest.
It left a stranger behind it, standing in the road beside his baggage.
He calmly looked over his surroundings. Then, with perfect ease, he lifted his heavy wooden box by its rope handle and advanced to the group of men who had been more or less disinterestedly watching him from the low porch of the town’s combined saloon, post-office, and general store.
A miner who was distinguished by his height, his unusual slenderness of waist, and a long scar which drew up the left corner of his lip into a repulsive grin, eyed him closely from the front of the group. The new arrival set down his baggage and addressed him.
“Is this Ramapo, friend?” he asked quietly.
The miner let his eyes rove superciliously over his questioner. He saw a young man almost as tall as himself, with curly black hair. His features were clean-cut, his figure straight, and his shoulders broad and powerful. He wore the comfortable, careless western costume of that period, now dusty and mud-splashed from traveling; but he carried no pistol at his hip. Except for an indefinable air of breeding about him, and a soft drawl in his speech that proclaimed him as a Southerner, there was little to distinguish him from any member of the group before which he stood.
“You gits a bull’s-eye, Curly,” the tall man answered, making no effort to conceal the sneer in his voice. “This is the great an’ in-famous metropolis o’ Ramapo, itself! An’, bein’ one of its leadin’ citizens an’ misfortunes, I hereby welcomes you, an’ invites you to plant your stakes in this fertile landscape an’ decorate the scenery with your charmin’ personality.”
There was a little snicker behind him.
“Thanks,” the stranger answered coolly, his gray eyes, under his broad-brimmed hat, looking steadily into the other’s. “Evidently Ramapo has some curious attractions.”
“The keenness o’ your observation is astonishin’” the other replied, his face pushing and his eyes narrowing. “Ramapo has special attractions to induce the weary traveler to locate here, the most convincin’ o’ which is a good supply o’ lead, forty-four caliber, which it hastens to offer to them as has command o’ language, but no control of it.”