Promptly the card games ceased. In one, the pot lay as it was, its ownership undecided, in the centre of the table. The loungers' feet dropped to the floor. An inebriate, half dozing in the corner, awoke. Well they knew it was for no small reason that Mick interrupted their diversions. Up they came—Grover of the far-away "XXX" ranch, who had been here for two days now, and had lost the price of a small herd; Gilbert of the "Lost Range," whose brand was a circle within a circle; Stetson of the "XI," a short heavy-set man, with an immovable pugilist's face, to-night, as usual, ahead of the game; Thompson, one-armed but formidable, who drove the stage and kept the postoffice and inadequate general store just across to the north of the saloon; McFadden, a wiry little Scotchman with sandy whiskers, Rankin's nearest neighbor to the south; a half-dozen lesser lights, in distinction from the big ranchers called by their first names, "Buck" or "Pete" or "Bill" as the case might be, mere cowmen employed at a salary. Elbow to elbow they leaned upon the supporting bar, awaiting with interest the something they knew Kennedy had to say.
Kennedy did not ask a single man what he would have. It was needless. Silently he placed a glass before each, and starting a bottle of red liquor at one end of the line, he watched it, as, steadily emptying, it passed on down to the end.
"I never use it, you know," he explained, as, the preparation complete, they looked at him expectantly.
"Take something else, then," pressed McFadden.
Mick poured out a glass of water and set it on the bar before him; but not an observer smiled. They knew the man they were dealing with.
"All right, boys,"—McFadden's glass went up on a level with his eye, and one and all the others followed the motion,—"all right, boys! Here's to you, Kennedy!"—mouthing the last word as though it were a hot pebble, and in unison the dozen odd hands led the way to their respective owners' mouths. There was a momentary pause; then a musical clinking, as the empty glasses returned to the board. Silence, expectant silence, returned.
"Boys,"—Mick looked from face to face intimately,—"we've got work ahead. Hoyt here reported this morning that two of the best horses on the Big B were missing. He's made a forty-mile circuit to-day, and no one has seen anything of them. You all know what that means."
Stetson turned to the foreman. "What time did you see them last, Hoyt?"
"About nine last evening."
"Sure?"