"Tell 'em to meet me in the saloon pronto!" Garvey shouted after him.
The saloon keeper passed an impatient half hour. A quartet of Mexicans entered his place demanding liquor, but Garvey waved them away. Something important was evidently on foot.
Soon the dull clip-clop of horses' hoofs was heard, and he went to the door to see five riders approaching Lost Springs from the north. He waved his hand to them before they had left the cover of the cottonwoods.
The group of sunburned, booted men who hastily entered Garvey's Place were individuals of the Lost Springs ruler's own stamp. All were gunmen, and some wore two revolvers. Most of them were wanted by the law for dark deeds done elsewhere. Sheriffs from the Texas Panhandle would have recognized two of them as Al and Andy Arnold—brother murderers. Another was a killer chased out of Dodge City, Kansas—a slender, quick-fingered youth known as "Pick" Stephenson. Henry Shank—a gunman from Lincoln, New Mexico—strode in their lead.
The fifth member of the quintet was the most terrible of them all. He was a half-breed Apache, dressed partly in the Indian way and partly like a white. He wore a battered felt hat with a feather in the crown. He wore no shirt, but over his naked chest was buttoned a dirty vest, around which two cap-and-ball Colt revolvers swung.
His stride, muffled by his beaded moccasins, was as noiseless as a cat's. This man—Garvey's go-between—was Charley Hood. He grinned continually, but his smile was like the snarl of a snapping dog.
"What's up, Garvey?" Shank demanded. "We was just ready to start out fer a cattle clean-up."
"Plenty's up," snarled Garvey. "Help yoreselves to liquor while I tell yuh. First o' all, do any of yuh know Kid Wolf?"
It was evident that most of them had heard of him. None had seen him, however, and Garvey went on to tell what had happened.
"How many men did he take with him?" Stephenson wanted to know.