He was like a death’s-head, with his expressionless eyes, his hairless face and head and tightly stretched, sallow skin. When he spoke, his lips scarcely moved. Jack Allen knew the man had no more fear in him than a stone. There would be no taking such a man alive.
“Yeh, I’ve got a hard bunch workin’ for me, but I figgered that until this quartz gang is busted up I might as well have fighters as well as workers,” he said softly in reply to a question from Allen.
The Wyoming sheriff nodded; this sounded like sense to him.
“I hear yuh struck it rich?” he asked, after a pause, in which each man frankly studied the other.
“One of the old-timers went broke sinkin’ my shaft,” Baldy explained. “His vein petered out, an’ the fool killed himself. A greaser who worked for him tipped me off that by putting in a side cut I could strike a rich vein. I bought the place for taxes an’ did what the greaser tol’ me. An’ I’ve struck it rich—plenty rich! I’m sorta hopin’ that what that old fool Pop Howes believes about the El Dorado mother lode startin’ again on this side of the gulch is true, ’cause, if it does, I’ve got it an’ not him.”
“How many men yuh got workin’ for yuh?”
“Eight—an’ they’re all gun slingers.”
Jack Allen was silent for a moment. Was this a threat, or a mere statement of fact? His eyes caught and held Baldy’s.
“How did that ol’-timer kill himself?”
“Threw himself down the shaft,” said the mine owner quickly.