“You go to baid, Johnny?” Tony asked.
“No. I couldn’t sleep. Tell me again just what that man said to you that night on the North Fork.”
The big Basque smiled. He had already told his story twice.
“I jus’ remember I look at hees hat, and he smile. That’s fonny hat, you know—so small brim, great beeg crown. No mens wear hats like those now. He geeve it to me for tak’ good look. The ban’ on eet is ver-ry fine. ‘Yes,’ he say, ‘that’s Indian ban’. Moqui Indian mak’ those ban’. Mak’ eet out of horsehair.’
“But more fonny that those hat is little green snake he have fasten on that ban’. That snake have green eyes. Eet’s a gold snake, too. ‘Press the haid of that snake,’ he say. Por Dios, that snake fall into my han’. ‘That’s beeg medicine,’ he say, ‘those snake. Been on that hat forty year!’
“‘Why you wear those old hat?’ I ask. He tell me; but he don’ smile. ‘Plenty hats like theese, long time ago in Santa Fe and Tombstone,’ he say. ‘Some day I fin’ the man what owns theese hat. He’ll remember eet!’”
“Yuh can’t git away from it, Tony,” Johnny exclaimed. “He was lookin’ for somebody, and that somebody got him. Horsehair hat-bands ain’t uncommon. He wouldn’t have ripped it off his hat to keep folks from rememberin’ it. That Indian snake was what he’d have hid and he’d have unsnapped it and put it in his pants. But it’s against all sense to believe that he took off even the snake. He wanted to be recognized.”
Johnny slapped his knee emphatically. “I tell you,” he declared, “the man what killed him tore off that band!”
Tony shrugged his shoulders. “Quien sabe!” he muttered.
Johnny was still for a minute. Then suddenly: “Say! That man had a horse when he came here. He didn’t walk into town.”