“Kinda looks like it was goin’ to be a wet season,” remarked the smaller of the three cowboys humorously.
He was a thin-faced, sallow-looking person, and as he removed his big hat to wipe the perspiration from the sweatband, he exposed a head which was totally bald. The sallow skin of his head seemed to be stretched so tightly over his skull that it wrinkled slightly in the back of his neck, and there was a red circle around it, marking the line of his hat.
Taking him all in all, “Baldy” Kern was not a beautiful object. His teeth were bad, his boots bulged from bunions, and he did not conceal the fact that the law was something that concerned him not.
The other two cowboys laughed raucously at his witticism. Perhaps they were amused; perhaps they laughed because Baldy Kern had laughed. At any rate, Torres’ eyes flashed angrily as he lurched past them and out into the street, where he stopped and looked around, looking for the man who had almost drowned him.
Both Hashknife and Sleepy were already heading for the Hawkworth ranch, and the two men were just driving away from the hitch-rack farther up the street and across. Torres flapped his wet arms dismally and went stumbling across toward the Greenback Saloon.
“Who are them two strange punchers?” asked Kern.
Lanning did not know any more than Kern did, but he said: “I dunno. They spent a lot of time with the sheriff, if that means anything to you, Kern.”
After delivering this veiled information, Lanning went back up the street, leaving Kern to think it over.
“Didja hear about the holdup last night?” asked the blacksmith.
Kern looked up quickly. “What holdup?”