"You have to learn a foreign langwidge before you start to play," he said. "Leastwise a code. The langwidge ain't what you'd expect them to be handin' out in a young lady's college. All erbout deuce an' love. I'd a notion we'd fix up the game fo' her so she'd c'ud keep it up but I dunno. It sure ain't a fat man's game. It's a human grasshopper's."
CHAPTER XI
PAY DIRT
In September there was a killing in the Good Luck Pool Room, the murder of a stranger whose friends made such an investigation, backed by the real law-and-order element of Hereford, that the exposure brought about forfeiture of all licenses and a strict shutting down on gambling and illicit liquor. Plimsoll left Hereford for his horse ranch, deprived of the sheriff's official countenance, and Jordan began to worry about election.
One evening in early October a little body of riders came to the Three Star, all strangers to the county, men whose faces were grim, who cracked no jokes, whose greetings were barely more than civil. They were well armed and they acted like men of a single purpose.
"This is the Three Star, ain't it?" asked the leader of a cowboy, who nodded silently, taking in the appearance of the visitors.
"Bourke, Peters and Manning?"
"One and all," answered the Three Star rider. "Find 'em at chuck, I reckon. You-all are jest in time. If you aim to stay overnight I'll tend yore hawsses an' put 'em in the corral."