"They got me when I wasn't looking and I guess they didn't know about the reward. You don't seem interested in collecting it."
Doc Chase sniffed loftily. "Blood money ain't no good to no one stranger. I reckon you'll be welcome up to the Nest. Tommie!" This last was called to the boy who came quickly from his play. "Tommie, run up the flag."
"The stripes or the white one?" asked the lad.
"The white, you young idiot. Can't yuh recognize a friend when yuh see one?"
So Childress rode on into the rough country, confident that no pot-shot would be taken at him from the abundant cover on either side of the trail. Had the stars and stripes fluttered from the signal mast on the hill behind Doc Chase's cabin, he probably would not have been allowed to cover the first of the two miles that intervened without being made a target. As the flag was white, he rode safely and unchallenged into the small mountain park which so surprisingly decorated the region of mountainous despoliation.
Years before Bart Crowe, a potential outlaw, had found refuge there, liked the semi-forested location, and had taken up a homestead. Once the property was his and his debt to the law squared by the statute of limitations, he had built a log hotel and passed the word among his hard-riding, careless friends that at Crow's Nest was a sure refuge in the time of storm. The arrangement with Doc Chase had come later and was particularly designed against Prohibition raiders, since Montana sheriffs and their deputies preferred to wait until men they desired had left the "nest."
With the law's repression closing in on the better known and more respectable resorts of the state, Crowe's business had increased. A supply of liquor always available through his rum runners from the North, he had built up quite a trade with loggers from the camps in the Bitter Root forests. They could get in if they looked right to Doc Chase and stay until they had spent their earnings. If there was a tougher place in the United States than Crow's Nest—he had dropped the "e" of his own name for that of the glossy-black carrion birds which were at home among the cedars—Bart Crowe would have wondered "how come."
Before the main structure of the small settlement—a log building of considerable size—Childress dropped rein on his cayuse and entered. Beyond the open door he found a long bar, its wood unpolished and with no brass rail for impatient feet, at which half a dozen men were drinking. Two wore the vividly-colored Mackinaws of lumberjacks and the calk studded boots that went with the same; two were in riding clothes of balloon-trousered cut; a fifth was dressed in the height of Helena fashion and the sixth he recognized from description as Bart Crowe himself. Behind the rough bar, a pasty youth with plastered hair was polishing glasses. The only difference between him and the bartenders of the pre-Volstead era was the fact that he wore a flannel shirt instead of a white jacket, but under the collar of that shirt blazed a crimson tie with a more-or-less diamond accompaniment.
No one paid particular attention to the newcomer, although seven covert glances certainly were directed his way. They had known that someone was coming, as reported by the flag. It was up to him to make the first overture.
Childress glanced at the group, as though seeking a familiar face, and he nodded to the man so easily recognized as the proprietor. He still wore his hat, pulled down over his eyes.