The two regarded each other for a moment in silence. “Why,” asked de Spain, boiling a little, “should that damned, hulking brute try to blow my head off just now?”
“Only for the good of the order, Henry,” grinned the scout.
“Nice job Jeff has picked out for me,” muttered de Spain grimly, “standing up in these Sleepy Cat barrooms to be shot at.” He drew in a good breath and threw up the wet brim of his 106 hat. “Well, such is life in the high country, I suppose. Some fine day Mr. Sandusky will manage to get me––or I’ll manage to get him––that all depends on how the happening happens. Anyway, Bob, it’s bad luck to miss a man. We’ll hang that much of a handicap on his beef-eating crop. Is he the fellow John calls the butcher?” demanded de Spain.
“That’s what everybody calls him, I guess.”
The two rejoined Lefever at the head of the stairs and the three discussed the news. Even Lefever seemed more serious when he heard the report. Scott, when asked where Sandusky now was, nodded toward the big room in front of them.
Lefever looked toward the gambling-tables. “We’ll go in and look at him.” He turned to Scott to invite his comment on the proposal. “Think twice, John,” suggested the Indian. “If there’s any trouble in a crowd like that, somebody that has no interest in de Spain or Sandusky is pretty sure to get hurt.”
“I don’t mean to start anything,” explained Lefever. “I only want de Spain to look at him.”
But sometimes things start themselves. Lefever found Sandusky at a faro-table. At his side sat his partner, Logan. Three other players, together with the onlookers, and the dealer––whose tumbled hair fell partly over the visor that protected 107 his eyes from the glare of the overhead light––made up the group. The table stood next to that of Tenison, who, white-faced and impassive under the heat and light, still held to his chair.
Lefever took a position at one end of the table, where he faced Sandusky, and de Spain, just behind his shoulder, had a chance to look the two Calabasas men closely over. Sandusky again impressed him as a powerful man, who, beyond an ample stomach, carried his weight without showing it. What de Spain most noted, as it lay on the table, was the size and extreme length of the outlaw’s hand. He had heard of Sandusky’s hand. From the tips of the big fingers to the base of the palm, this right hand, spread over his chips, would cover half again the length of the hand of the average man.
De Spain credited readily the extraordinary stories he had heard of Sandusky’s dexterity with a revolver or a rifle. That he should so lately have missed a shot at so close range was partly explained now that de Spain perceived Sandusky’s small, hard, brown eyes were somewhat unnaturally bright, and that his brows knit every little while in his effort to collect himself. But his stimulation only partly explained the failure; it was notoriously hard to upset the powerful outlaw with alcohol. De Spain noted the coarse, 108 straw-colored hair––plastered recently over the forehead by a barber––the heavy, sandy mustache, freshly waxed by the same hand, the bellicose nostrils of the Roman nose, the broad, split chin, and mean, deep lines of a most unpromising face. Sandusky’s brown shirt sprawled open at the collar, and de Spain remembered again the flashy waistcoat, fastened at the last buttonhole by a cut-glass button.