“Liquor, Mike!” croaked the foremost, wiping his dust-rimmed eyes. “A drink! Buck been in town to-day?”
Galway Mike set out a bottle and made a grimace, but neither man noticed it. Both seized for the bottle at once, pouring drinks with shaking hands.
“Nope,” said Mike at last. “Ain’t been in.”
“Gosh, that feels good goin’ down!” rejoined the foremost man. “Say, you got to get word out to Buck to-night; we can’t ride another mile. Done killed two hosses on the way up. Tell Buck we done lost our man——”
At length the dead stillness of the place struck home. The two riders glanced at each other, then turned to survey the crowd. Despite the fact that the general sympathy was with them, nobody could keep back a grin at their perturbed wonder. Then, from the end of the bar, a voice spoke up—a drawling, whimsical voice:
“You ain’t lost him, cowboy. You just follered him. Ain’t it the truth?”
There, thumbs in his vest and leaning back in his chair, was Fisher. The two stared at him, petrified. Fisher sat at a table just beyond the lower end of the bar, where he was practically hidden from view of any one at the door, yet had a clear field of vision.
“Sheriff Fisher!” exclaimed the two astounded riders in unison, as though they were staring at a ghost.
There was dead silence for a moment.
Every one in the room sensed the peculiar tenseness of that moment—a moment of crisis, of taut nerves, of impending disaster, as the two riders stared at Sam Fisher and he smiled back at them. Perhaps he saw how their fingers stiffened, yet he did not move. If he did not see it, Galway Mike did. Mike’s hand fell, inch by inch, below the edge of the bar on which he leaned.