"This. Mormon, choose yore side."
"Heads."
Sandy flipped the coin. It fell with a golden ring on the floor. "Tails," said Sandy inspecting it. "You come, Sam. Staht afteh noon. Oil up yore gun."
"I knowed I'd lose," said Mormon dolefully. "Dang my luck anyway."
It was a little after seven o'clock when Sandy and Sam walked out of the Cactus Restaurant, leaving their ponies hitched to the rail in front. They strolled down the main street of Hereford across the railroad tracks to where the "Brisket," as the cowboys styled the little town's tenderloin, huddled its collection of shacks, with their false fronts faced to the dusty street and their rear entrances, still cumbered with cases of empty bottles and idle kegs, turned to the almost dry bed of the creek. The signs of ante-prohibition days, blistered and faded, were still in place. Light showed in windows where fly-specked useless licenses were displayed. Back of the bars a melancholy array of soda-water advertised lack of interest in soft drinks. The front rooms held no loungers, but the click of chips and murmurs of talk came from behind closed doors.
Sandy stopped outside the place labeled "Good Luck Pool Parlors. J. Plimsoll, Prop." The line "Best Liquor and Cigars" was half smeared out. He patted gently the butts of the two Colts in the holsters, whose ends were tied down to the fringe ornaments of his chaps. Sam stroked his ropey mustache and eased the gun at his hip. Sandy pushed open the door and went in. A man was playing Canfield at a table in the deserted bar. As the pair entered he looked up with a "Howdy, gents?" shoving back a rickety table and chair noisily on the uneven floor. The inner door swung silently as at a signal and Jim Plimsoll came out. He stiffened a little at the sight of the Three Star men and then grinned at Sam.
"How was the last bottle, Soda-Water?" he asked. "You didn't have to change your name with Prohibition, did you? Nor your habits."
"Main thing that's changed is the quality of yore booze—an' the price, neither fo' the better," said Sam carelessly.
"We ain't drinkin' ter-night, Jim," said Sandy. "Dropped in to hev a li'l' talk with you an' then take a buck at the tiger."
Plimsoll's eyes glittered.