“Collins,—Come to the mouth of Padre Canyon to-morrow. Can’t trust anybody else. Can tell you something you might like to know. Destroy this note at once, and come alone.
“Nolan.”
Cultus lighted a cigarette over the chimney of his lamp and studied the pencilled note, wondering what it was all about. The writing was clean-cut, no words misspelt.
“If that note is from Blaze Nolan, it shore ruins some of my pet theories,” he told himself. “It could have been left on the desk by Jules or Tony. And where is Padre Canyon, I wonder? I reckon I’ll find out if that’s Blaze Nolan’s handwritin’, before I poke my nose into any traps.”
He folded the note, shoved it deep in his pocket, kicked off his boots and blew out the lamp before he opened the window. Across the street was the War Dance Saloon, going at full blast, the strains of a fiddle and a jangling piano playing a rag-time; two cowboys trying to harmonise “Sweet Adeline” on the sidewalk below his window; blue moonlight and the deep shadows where a group of horses dozed at a hitchrack, and far to the west, where the stars seemed to be tumbling down, was Red Horse Pass etched clearly against the sky.
“The moonlight does knock off the rough edges,” muttered Cultus. “Sometimes I wonder why folks live in a place like this.”
And, as though in answer, came the voices of the two cowboys singing an old Southwest refrain:
“Just dust and heat,
One crooked street;
The houses ain’t very tall.
It’s grim and hard,