“Buck up, buck up, partner.  We’ll get him yet!”

Now it flashed into the mind of Sinclair that it must be a pair of crooked gamblers working on some fat purse in the hotel, come out here to arrange plans because they failed to extract the bank roll as quickly as they desired.  Otherwise, there could be no meaning to this talk of “getting” someone.

“But between you and me,” grumbled the big man, “it looked from the first like a bum game, Fatty.”

“That’s the trouble with you, Red.  You ain’t got any patience.  How does a cat catch a mouse?  By sitting down and waiting—­maybe three hours.  And the hungrier she gets, the longer she’ll wait and the stiller she’ll sit.  A man could take a good lesson out’n that.”

“You always got a pile of fancy words,” protested the big man.

Sinclair saw Fatty put his hand on the shoulder of his companion.  Plainly he was the dominant force of the two, in spite of his lack of height.

“Red, as sure as you’re born, they’s something going to happen this here night.  My scars is itching, Red, and that means something.”

Again the mind of Sinclair flashed back to something familiar.  A man who prophesied by the itching of his scars.  But once more the danger of the moment made his mind a blank to all else.

“What scars?” asked Red.

“Scratches I got when I was a kid,” flashed the fat man.  “That’s all.”  “Oh,” chuckled Red, plainly unconvinced.  “Well, we’ll play the game a little longer.”

“That’s the talk, partner.  I tell you we got this trap baited, and it’s got to catch!”

Presently they drifted around the corner of the building and out of sight.  For a moment Sinclair wondered what that trap could be which the fat man had baited so carefully.  His mind reverted to his original picture of a card game.  Cheap tricksters, sharpers with the cards, he decided, and with that decision he banished them both from his mind.

There was no other sign of life around him.  All of Sour Creek lived in the main street, or went to bed at this hour of the early night.  The back of the hotel was safe from observance, except for the horse shed, and the back of the shed was turned to him.  He felt safe, and now he turned, settled his fingers into a new grip on the eaves, and made his third attempt.  It succeeded to a nicety, his right knee catching solidly on the ledge.

He got a fingertip hold on the boards and stood up.  Straightening himself slowly, he looked into the room through a corner of the window pane.

Cartwright sat with his back to the window, a lamp beside him on the table, writing.  He had thrown off his heavy outer shirt, and he wore only a cotton undershirt.  His heavy shoulders and big-muscled arms showed to great advantage, with the light and sharp shadows defining each ridge.  Now and then he lifted his head to think.  Then he bent to his writing again.