“Suppose some one steps on his toes?” queried a traveling man in a derby.
“He’s a shootin’ fool,” returned the waiter, with a final sweep across the counter. He spoke in an undertone, for the wild rider, with a final “Yip-yip-yip!’ pulled his horse to a stop in a cloud of dust at the door. “Killed two men the last three years. Got off on self-_dee_-fense.”
“Whee-ee-ee!” The rider stepped down lightly as a dancer, dropped the reins over the panting pinto’s head, and walked to the open door. His black boots were absurdly small and high-heeled. He was pigeon-toed and bow-legged. He strutted slouchily. A cartridge-belt, filled to the last loop, encircled his slim waist and sagged to the holster on his right thigh.
The holster held a nickeled, bone-handled, frontier-type revolver, its curving hammer gleaming in the sunlight. The gun was of heavy caliber. Here was a Westerner who took no stock in the automatic, apparently.
He leaned against the door-jamb for a moment, surveying the party within—a handsome youth, but with a thin-lipped mouth given too readily to sneering. His eye, the cool, keen gray eye of the killer, never opened very widely, turned but little, yet saw everything.
“Hello, Sam, yo’ old polecat!” he greeted the man behind the counter. “Rustle me a quart of moonshine. And good stuff, too, or I’ll come back and brand yo’.”
Sam Turner smiled nervously. Everybody in Rodeo and vicinity knew the lunch-counter as only a mask for his real occupation, which was selling bootleg stuff. But he hated having it bellowed to the world. Even one of the harmless-looking gang in front of him might be a dry agent. His reply was intended to turn the subject.
“Hello, Pete. You leavin’ the Bar-X?”
The cowpuncher grinned. “Leavin’ ’em flat. McCaleb got gabby because I take a drink, the—” His profanity was more impressive because it was low-voiced and drawled. “I beat him up with my six-gun and come away.”