“Heard anything more about Cañon Jim?” he asked Bullard, the proprietor of The Golden Cloud, “ain’t come in yet?”
Bullard shook his head.
“No––nor he won’t, according to my notion. Think he mistook th’ False Ridge drop. Ain’t no man could make it up again without th’ hammer spike an’ rope.”
“H’m––don’t know. Don’t know,” mused Courtrey. “I’ve always thought it could be done. There ought to be a way on th’ other side, seems like.”
“Well, ought an’ is is two diff’rent things, Buck,” grinned Bullard.
“Sure,” nodded the king, “sure. An’ yet––”
“Hello, Buck.”
A soft hand touched Courtrey’s shoulder with a subtle caress. He wheeled on the instant, ready, alert. Then he smiled and reaching up, took the hand and held it openly.
“Hello, Lola,” he said, “how goes it?”
The newcomer was a woman, full, rounded, dark, and she was past-master of men––as witness the slow glance that she turned interestedly out over the teeming room, even while the pulse in the wrist in Courtrey’s clasp leaped like a racer. She 23 was a perfect specimen of a certain type, beautiful after a resplendent fashion, full of eye and lip, confident, calm. She was brilliantly clad in crimson and black, and rings of value shone on her ivory-like hands.