“Son,” he said hoarsely. “I
c’n see you’re game. But don’t
make a fall play. If Mac Strann gets you, he’ll
California you like a yearling. You won’t
have no chance. You’ve done for Jerry, there
ain’t a doubt of that, but Jerry to Mac is like
a tame cat to a mountain-lion. Lad, I c’n
see you’re a stranger to these parts, but ask
me your questions and I’ll tell you the best
way to go.”
Barry slipped from the saddle.
He said: “I’d like to know the best
place to put up my hoss.”
The deputy marshal was speechless.
“But I s’pose,” went on Barry, “I
can stable him over there behind the hotel.”
Matthews pushed off his sombrero and rubbed his short
fingers through his hair. Anger and amazement
still choked him, but he controlled himself by a praiseworthy
effort.
“Barry,” he said, “I don’t
make you out. Maybe you figure to wait till Mac
Strann gets to town before you leave; maybe you think
your hoss can outrun anything on four feet. And
maybe it can. But listen to me: Mac Strann
ain’t fast on a trail, but the point about him
is that he never leaves it! You can go through
rain and over rocks, but you can’t never shake
Mac Strann—not once he gets the wind of
you.”
“Thanks,” returned the gentle-voiced stranger.
“I guess maybe he’ll be worth meeting.”
And so saying he turned on his heel and walked calmly
towards the big stables behind the hotel and at his
heels followed the black dog and the black horse.
As for deputy marshal Matthews, he moistened his lips
to whistle, but when he pursed them, not a sound came.
He turned at length into the barroom and as he walked
his eye was vacant. He was humming brokenly:
"Sweet Adeline, my Adeline,
At night, dear heart, for you I
pine."
Inside, he took firm hold upon the bar with both pudgy
hands.
“O’Brien,” he said, “red-eye.”
He pushed away the small glass which the bartender
spun towards him and seized in its place a mighty
water-tumbler.
“O’Brien,” he explained, “I
need strength, not encouragement.” And
filling the glass nearly to the brim he downed the
huge potion at a single draught.
THE BUZZARD
Most animals have their human counterparts, and in
that room where Jerry Strann had fallen a whimsical
observer might have termed Jerry, with his tawny head,
the lion, and O’Brien behind the bar, a shaggy
bear, and the deputy marshal a wolverine, fat but
dangerous, and here stood a man as ugly and hardened
as a desert cayuse, and there was Dan Barry, sleek
and supple as a panther; but among the rest this whimsical
observer must have noticed a fellow of prodigious
height and negligible breadth, a structure of sinews
and bones that promised to rattle in the wind, a long,
narrow head, a nose like a beak, tiny eyes set close
together and shining like polished buttons, and a
