But when the colonel felt in his waistcoat pocket for a cigar he found none. He stepped down to the barroom to get one. Baldy Green, the old stage driver, was sitting by the office stove. The two fell into talk and Scot sat down to smoke his cigar with the old-timer.
A man whom Scot did not know lounged into the office and out again. In the darkness outside he whispered to two men. One of them was the ex-mule-skinner Hopkins, a dyed-in-the-wool bad man; the other was Sam Dutch.
The hotel office had three doors. One opened from the street, a rear one led to the rooms, the third was a double swing door separating the office from the bar. Scot’s chair was so placed that he faced the entrance from the street and the bar. His back was half-turned to the rear one.
The stage driver was talking. “You betcha, Colonel. If us old-timers had the say-so we’d elect you by a mile. Sure would. That slick scalawag Dodson, why he—he——”
Scot’s first warning came from Baldy’s consternation. His eyes popped out. They were staring at some apparition in the back of the room. The words of his sentence stuck in the roof of his mouth. Almost simultaneously came the click McClintock knew from of old.
He whirled in the chair dragging at his revolver. It caught on his coat. Two bolts of lightning flamed. The crash of heavy thunder filled the room. Scot sagged in his seat, the curly head falling forward heavily on the chest. From his slack fingers the revolver dropped.
Again the guns boomed. Another jagged knife thrust of pain went through and through Scot’s body.
“Got him. Got him good, Sam,” an exultant voice announced hoarsely through the smoke.
A hulking figure slouched forward cautiously. The victim lay huddled in the chair motionless, both hands empty of weapons. No sign of life showed in the lax body.
“Always said I’d git him.” Dutch broke into a storm of oaths. He reversed his revolver and struck the fallen head savagely with the butt.