Swede Sorenson had just ridden in from Crescent City, bringing the mail; and among it was a letter for Nick Kales, postmarked from the town of Wheeler.
Kales looked it over gloomily and put it unopened into his pocket. He exchanged a word or two with Dutch Van Cleve aside, and a little later they both approached Roper Bates, a saturnine, narrow-between-the-eyes sort of a puncher.
“Can yuh read?” queried Kales.
“Well,” grinned Roper, “I ain’t no —— professional reader, as yuh might say; but I sabe some of the alphabet.”
“Yuh know how to keep your mouth shut, don’t yuh?”
“Now,” said Roper seriously, “you’re guessin’ me dead center. Shoot the piece, Kales.”
Kales took out the letter and handed it to Roper, who looked at it curiously.
“It ain’t never been opened,” he remarked.
“Me ’n’ Dutch can’t read,” explained Kales. “We’re askin’ yuh to decipher it for us; sabe?”
Roper took out the letter and laboriously spelled out the pencil-written message.