Slim Kinney had greeted the dawn with a speculative eve. Would this day bring Beaudry Rand to "town?"
Kinney hoped it would. For Kinney was a killer of men, who delighted in his profession. And this was the first time in his life that he would be able to kill under the protection of the law. It was an innovation, an astounding reversal of the conditions under which he always had done his killing, and he was eager to experience the venomous thrill he knew it would give him.
He grinned cruelly when, after descending the stairs that led from the room on the upper floor of the Rial to Hotel, in which he had passed the night, he leaned against a corner of the building and watched the sun climb over the peaks of a distant line of hills — the same hills that rimmed the basin in which, at about the time Kinney stood in front of the Rialto, Rand was taking leave of Larry Redfern.
Ocate was asleep when Kinney descended to the street; and in the sepulchral silence which enveloped the town, Kinney drew out his guns and examined them, grinning his cruel grin. For Kinney took good care of his guns — they were the props of his existence, and he never knew when he might want to use them. Experience had taught him to be prepared.
Restoring the weapons to their holsters, he looked down at his vest, upon which gleamed a small, round badge with the words "Deputy Sheriff" engraved upon it. Kinney grinned again, and with one end of the scarlet scarf that encircled his neck, he polished the bit of metal until it flashingly reflected the first rays of the morning sun.
Kinney took some pride in his personal appearance. His boots were well polished; his corduroy trousers were neatly stuffed into the soft leather tops of the boots; his woolen shirt was clean, and his face smooth-shaven.
Despite these virtues, however, Kinney looked what he was — a conscienceless killer of men.
There was no softening quality in his cruel eyes. His mouth was truculent, with thin lips that drooped at the corners; his nose was long and slender, and depressed at the tip, where it joined the upper lip; and there was a slouching droop to his shoulders which gave the impression of lazy carelessness.
Later, in the street, Kinney was joined by Compton.
Compton had taken a room at the Gilt Edge for the night, and despite the dissipation of the night before, he looked fresh and sleek.
"Expecting Rand in today?" was his question after greeting the gunfighter.
Kinney grinned wolfishly. "There's no tellin'," he said. "He might take a notion to ride in. Anyway, I'm keepin' my eyes peeled."
"Drinking?" suggested Compton, moving his head slightly toward one of the saloons.
"Not none," said the gunfighter. "I'm keepin' a clear head."
Compton's eyes gleamed. "That's right; don't take any chances."
The town was shaking off its lethargy. Sounds began to smite the flatness of the still morning air — doors were opening; somewhere a woman laughed; the sound of men's voices filtered through the wall of the building behind Compton and Kinney, and there came to the ears of both men a heavy clumping upon the board floors within. Ocate was awakening.
"If you think you're needing any help," began Compton. He paused when he saw Kinney's lips curl.
"If you was thinkin' I was needin' help you wouldn't have hired me for this job," shallowly grinned the gunman. "I reckon I'll play her a lone hand."
He took leave of Compton presently and entered a restaurant, where he ate heartily.
There was not the slightest nervousness in Kinney's manner — he was cool, composed, saturnine. Complacently, coldly, confidently, he regarded the faces of men he saw in the restaurant near him. He grinned broadly at the waitress who served him — so significantly that a crimson stain appeared in the girl's cheeks, inured though she was to the brazenness of men; he joked with the proprietor when he nonchalantly paid his bill at the desk; and he stepped out into the street unconcerned over the prospect of murder, calmly picking his teeth as he glanced down the street.
For though Kinney had looked upon fear, he had never experienced the sensation. He had seen it in men's eyes when he had drawn his guns to kill them — they had exhibited it nakedly in those moments — and he had gloated over them. But he had never known what it was to fear a gun in another man's hand.
Knowing his own ability with the six-shooter — having practised the slippery, snakelike motion that enabled him to get his weapons into action in a shorter space of time than any man he ever had met — he felt the dead certainty of victory in every encounter. He had begun to believe himself invincible, unconquerable. He had become a hardened, calloused, and egotistical disciple of self, answerable only to the malevolent passions that gripped him — the passions that were now gripping him.
He had thrown the toothpick from him, and was wiping his mouth with a big red bandanna handkerchief, when he heard a voice behind him — a hoarse, low whisper:
"He is coming!"
He turned swiftly, to see Compton standing in a doorway at his back. He grinned evilly, deliberately restoring the handkerchief to its pocket as he stepped out toward the hitching rail that skirted the sidewalk.
He observed that Ocate had completely shaken off its lethargy; that many men were on the street, and that several horses were standing at the various hitching rails in front of the buildings.
And then, with seeming carelessness, he dropped his hands to his sides, sweeping the butts of his pistols with his long, sensitive fingers — and faced to the eastern edge of town. At a little distance out on the big grass level he saw a horseman who rode loosely in the saddle — a tall, lithe man on a big black horse.
The black horse was coming steadily—not fast, but seeming to cover the ground easily and without effort. And yet, despite his lack of visible exertion, it was not many minutes before Kinney saw the black horse at the edge of town. And then a voice floating to Kinney from a point near where the black horse had halted, greeted the rider hilariously:
"Hello, Rand — you ol' son-of-a-gun!"
Kinney grinned sneeringly at the greeting. But the rider of the black horse came on again, heading the animal to the hitching rail in front of the Gilt Edge — where he dismounted, trailing the reins over the head of the beast. For an instant he stood, looking down the street. Then he walked toward Kinney.
Chapter XI. Fire and Ice
RAND had not conquered the terrible passions that had gripped him when he had sat on Midnight at the edge of the big plain gazing down into the mighty basin where Redfern stood. They still ruled him, paling his face with their intensity.
Outwardly he was coldly deliberate, and no man, watching him as he walked toward Kinney—noting the faint, mirthless smile on his face — would have divined that he had come to town to kill a man. Nor did Kinney, watching him with the furtive alertness of a carrion bird in the clutch of the hunger-lust, see anything in Rand's manner to warn him that the man was aware of the plot to kill him. For there was in Rand's eyes as he reached Kinney nothing but a gleam of casual inquiry. At least, so it seemed to the gunfighter.
Rand seemed about to pass Kinney—and the gun-fighter did not intend to molest Rand yet— for he was in no hurry — when he halted within a step of Kinney and said, slowly, his gaze meeting the gunfighter's, and holding it:
"Seen Webster around?"
Kinney's lips curved into a cold sneer. He had meant to delay, in order to watch Rand — to note the peculiarities of his movements; to acquaint himself with any eccentricity of muscular development he might have — a thing that would show in the way he handled himself; in the way he walked