The two started to walk slowly down the board sidewalk.
"They call me 'Gentleman John,'" said the black-clothed stranger.
"Have yuh been in Skull long? Expect to stay hereabouts for a while?"
The Texan answered both these questions shortly but politely. He had arrived that evening, he said, and he wasn't sure how long he would remain in the vicinity.
"How would yuh like," tempted the man who had styled himself Gentleman
John, "to make a hundred dollars a day?"
"Honestly?" asked The Kid.
The man in black pursed his lips and spread out his palms significantly.
"Whoever heard of a gunman making that much honestly?" he laughed coldly. "Maybe I should tell yuh somethin' about myself. They call me the 'Cattle King of New Mexico.' The man yuh bucked in the poker game—Blacksnake McCoy—is at the head of my—ah—outfit."
"Oh," said The Kid softly, "yo're that kind of a cattle king."
"Out here," Gentleman John leered, "the Colt is power. I've got ranches, cattle. I've managed to do well. I need gunmen—men who can shoot fast and obey orders. I can see that yo're a better man than Blacksnake. I'm payin' him fifty a day. Take his job, and yuh'll get a hundred."
Kid Wolf did not seem in the least enthusiastic, and the man in black went on eagerly: