“You say Jim Banker says he saw him?” demanded Sucatash.
“Yes.”
“Huh! That’s funny. Jim allows, down in Sulphur Falls, that he don’t know nothin’ about it. 187 Says he was south of the range, out on the desert at the time.”
“Reckon he’s forgot,” said Wallace. “Anyway, if it was Louisiana, he’s gone and I reckon he won’t come back.”
“I think it could not have been any one else,” said Solange, thoughtfully. “What kind of man was this—this Louisiana?”
“Tall, good-lookin’ young chap, slim and quick as a rattler. He’d fool you on looks. Came from Louisiana, and gets his name from that and from a sort of coon song he was always singin’. Something about ‘My Louisiana—Louisiana Lou!’ Don’t remember his right name except that it was something like Delaney. Lew Delaney, I think.”
“He was a dangerous man, you say?”
“Well—he was sure dangerous. I’ve seen some could shake the loads out of a six-gun pretty fast and straight, but I never saw the beat of this feller. Them things gets exaggerated after a time, but if half of what they tell of this fellow was true, he was about the boss of the herd with a small gun.
“Still, he never shoots any one until he mixes with Snake Murphy and that was Snake’s fault. He was on the run with some of Snake’s friends after him when this happens. That’s how come he was down here.”
In the morning Solange appeared, dressed for the range. The two young men, who had been smitten 188 by her previously, when she had been clad in the sort of garments they had seen on the dainty town girls, were doubly so when they saw her now. Slim and delicate, she wore breeches and coat of fair, soft leather and a Stetson, set over a vivid silk handkerchief arranged around her hair like a bandeau. The costume was eminently practical, as they saw at once, but it was also picturesquely feminine and dainty. It had the effect of raising her even higher above ordinary mortals. If it had been any other who wore it they would have contemptuously set her down as a moving-picture heroine and laughed behind her back. But Solange set off the costume and it set her off. Besides, it was not new, and had evidently been subjected to severe service. 189