The man had been friendly; in fact, he had been the sole friend that Annister appeared to have made since his arrival in Dry Bone. Now the bartender leaned forward, speaking in a whisper behind his hand:
“Watch your step, Mr. Annister,” he said.
Annister gave an almost imperceptible nod. Then, his drink before him upon the stained and battered mahogany, he glanced sidewise along the rail, to where, at the far end, two men stood together, eying him under lowered brows.
To Annister it seemed that there had fallen a sudden quiet. Just prior to his entrance he had heard talk and laughter, the clink of glasses, a thick, turgid oath. Now there appeared to rise and grow a tension, as of something electric in the air; Annister felt it in the white face of the knight of the apron, the sudden silence, the rigid figures of the two men at the end of the long bar.
Behind him, and a little to his left, three men were seated at a table: Bristow, sheriff of Dry Bone, a big man with a bleak, pale eye, and a mouth like a straight gash above a heavy chin barbered to the blood. With him were two others whom he did not know.
Lunn was nowhere in sight.
The taller of the two men standing at the bar turned, and Annister recognized him as Tucson Charlie Westervelt, a gunman with a dangerous record. Westervelt was wearing a high-crowned, white Stetson; Annister marked it at the distance, beneath it the fierce, hawklike face, turned now in his direction, the thin lips set stiffly in a sullen pout.
The old West had passed with the passing of the remuda, the trail herd, the mining camps; the wide, free range of the long-horned cattle was no more; but Dry Bone had not changed save that the loading-pens had gone; a cow would be a curiosity. But the lawless spirit of the ancient West remained. “Southwest of the Law,” indeed, Dry Bone was a law unto itself, and now about him Annister felt the menace; it appeared that he had walked into a trap.
The judge, the sheriff—what mockery of law there was—Annister knew that it would be against him, either way, attacking or attacked. He was certain of it as Westervelt, moving slowly along the bar, halted when perhaps three paces distant, elbow raised, right hand extended, clawlike, in a stiff, thrusting gesture above his guns.
It was the gesture of the killer, the preliminary for the lightning down-thrust of the stiff fingers; Annister knew that well enough. Now the gunman’s gaze, sleepy-lidded like a falcon’s, bored into his; his voice came with a snarling violence: