Then, without any apparent doubt as to what he was going to do next, he dropped into another store, one which specialized in guns and ammunition, though it, too, sold general supplies. He bought cartridges, both for the two forty-fives and for the rifle he carried. These he actually tested in his weapons, to make sure they fitted easily.
The proprietor attempted a pleasantry. “You’re kinda garnished with weapons, stranger. Not aimin’ to hold up the town, are you?”
The amiable laugh died away. The wall-eyed stranger was looking at him in bleak silence. Not an especially timid man, the owner of the place felt a chill run down his spine. That stare carried defiance, an unvoiced threat. Later, the storekeeper made of it a stock part of his story of the day’s events.
“When the stranger gave me that look of his I knew right away something was doing. ’Course I didn’t know what. I’ll not claim I did, but I was sure there’d be a job for the coroner before night. Blister come into the store just after he left. I said to him, ‘Who’s that big black guy?’ He says, ‘Jake Houck.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘Jake Houck is sure up to some deviltry.’”
It is easy to be a prophet after the event. When Houck jingled out of the store and along the sidewalk to the hotel, none of the peaceful citizens he met guessed what he had in mind. None of them saw the signal which passed between him and the young fellow who had just come out of Dolan’s. This was not a gesture. No words were spoken, but a message went from one to the other and back. The young puncher disappeared again into Dolan’s.
Afterward, when Bear Cat began to assemble its recollections of the events prior to the dramatic climax, it was surprising how little that was authentic could be recalled. Probably a score of people noted casually the three strangers. Houck was recognized by three or four, Bandy Walker by at least one. The six-foot youngster with them was known by nobody who saw him. It was learned later that he had never been in the town before. The accounts of how the three spent the hour between ten and eleven are confusing. If they met during that time it was only for a moment or two while passing. But it is certain that Bandy Walker could not have been both in the blacksmith shop and at Platt & Fortner’s five minutes before eleven. The chances are that some of the town people, anxious to have even a small part in the drama, mixed in their minds these strangers with others who had ridden in.
Bob Dillon and Dud Hollister dropped from their saddles in front of the hotel at just eleven o’clock. They had ridden thirty miles and stood for a moment stretching the cramp out of their muscles.
Dud spoke, nodding his head to the right. “Look what’s here, Sure-Shot. Yore friend Bandy—old, tried, an’ true.”
Walker was trailing his high-heeled boots through the dust across the street from Dolan’s toward the big store. If he saw Bob he gave no sign of knowing him.
The two friends passed into the hotel. They performed the usual rites of internal and external ablutions. They returned to the bar, hooked their heels, and swapped with Mike the news of the day.