Gloating, wholly evil, the murderer’s face gleamed in the streaming light. The train was moving—taking him away to safety. The sound of the shot has been lost, dimmed by the noise of the storm and the piercing blast of the whistle.
He had played it to the last line! Cross Traynor had been erased. There’d be no coming back this time. He saw him half out of bed, his head on the floor—a gory relic of what had been a man.
With an easy toss the killer dropped the dead man’s gun to the floor beside the body. That was the last, final touch! It made the slayer smile.
“That’s that, I guess. Dead—and by his own gun, too! Cross, you’ll never come back now.”
The train was gathering speed. The man flattened himself out. At the shipping pens the freight moved upon the main track. This slowing down was the awaited moment. Unseen, the man who had killed so easily slipped to the ground. The wool hook which had served him so well was tossed into the sage. Then, with sure step, he moved away in the night. This affair was a thing of the past. Who was there to question him?
CHAPTER III
BY HIS OWN HAND
In the Palace bar all was merry. To the casual eye Scanlon might have appeared an exception, a frosted flower in a garden of flaming blooms; but even his moroseness was giving way to a sly smile. Four mysterious aces had but recently appeared in Stub Rawlings’s hand. The Scanlon bank roll had been severely injured. The source of that handful of cards had sorely troubled the red-headed boss of the Palace. He had become conscious of the storm raging without, but he had not so much as cast a glance at the streaming windows. Mr. Rawlings’s play was of greater interest.
Lady Luck began to smile on the house. Scanlon’s stack of blue chips increased to dizzy heights. He now held Mr. Rawlings’s aces. He played them much better than Stub had. In fact, so well did he maneuver that when the Diamond-Bar man called, the game was over as far as Stub was concerned.
In the interval Scanlon flashed questioning eyes at the windows. Impatiently then he called to Vin: “The windows, Vin! Upstairs—shut the windows! This damn place’ll be floatin’ away if you don’t.”
Vin had been much the busier of the two. But that was as usual. He scowled now, though. Scanlon had been piling straws on the Basque’s back for some years. This threatened to be the one too many. Tomorrow he would brood over any damage done to the hotel; but now he was angry only with Scanlon. “Madre de Dios!” he growled. “I do all these worries for theese firm. I scrub those floors, I mak’ those bed, I wash those window—by Chris’, I not close them.”