“As I have hinted, Mr. Annister, I am interested in—certain operations; shall we call them—speculative? For some time now I have been in need of a sort of silent partner, or, rather, the Doctor—”
He caught himself with a click of his strong, white, even teeth. Annister’s face continued impassive, save for the keen eyes, veiled now under lowered lids. Rook continued:
“Annister,” he said suddenly, as if he had abruptly come to a decision, “I’ll lay my cards on the table with you: I need a man, and he can not afford to be too—scrupulous, do you understand? The—the doctor tells me I have been overdoing it.” He gave a faint, wintry smile. “We are—out of the beaten track here—southwest of the law, as you might call it....”
He lowered his voice to a faint, hissing sibilance:
“I will expect you to ask no questions. You have been a cow-man; there are certain interests to the north and the north-east of us; I am naming no names, understand? There is a good deal of range left, as you know, and—now, listen to me....”
His voice went on. For perhaps five minutes Annister listened in a heavy silence. And all that time, although the lawyer had not once called a spade a spade, the thing that he had unfolded was clear enough:
It was the old story; with something of a novel twist. First, there were the outfits scattered north and north-east, as Rook had said. The running off of a few cows, for instance, re-branding, and the rest of it—it was an old story to Annister—but there was something more. Annister, as he listened, realized that the thing was big, worthy, indeed, of the keen, devising brain that had evolved it.
A good many of the ranches had, for some time past, been owned and operated by the packers themselves; three of these: the Bar T, the Cross Circle L, the Flying U, were northward from Dry Bone scarce a hundred miles. But there were still other outfits. And, as Annister listened, he was hearing again a name, or, rather, a symbol, the name and the symbol of masked and hooded violence, and it was “S. S. S.”
Rook, it appeared, was the moving spirit of it, in Dry Bone, at any rate, but as the tale unfolded Annister, putting two and two together, supplied for that cryptic symbol a name, nation-wide and respected: the name of a great Company, an Octopus indeed, which, with Hamilton Rook as its agent, planned nothing less than the ruthless despoiling of those independent cattle men who, out of a desert of sand and sage, had won a living for their stock and for themselves, the rear guard of the order, now, as it seemed, indeed, caught in the far-flung tentacles of a monster, unscrupulous and without soul.
Annister’s part in it was to be simple. He was to do nothing as yet until the lawyer should give the word. But a man was wanted: a gun-fighter; a man bred to violence who would not consider too closely the method or the means. For, as Rook had said, his eyes upon Annister in a sudden, biting scrutiny: