"We will now pray," jeered Heck Seastrom amiably. "Brother Studd will read the Bible lesson and lead the singing. Ain't that a stem-winder of a stunt? Who's a-going to try it? Don't be bashful."
One of the crowd kicked the rock tentatively and stepped back, but there were no takers. Somebody in the background murmured softly, "It ain't always a matter of muscles, Seastrom. There's other ways."
The remark hung strangely in the room, intensifying the silence. Clint Charterhouse felt more strongly the undercurrent of antagonism. Everybody stood still; faces ranked darkly in the shaded room, a sibilant breath sheered the sultry atmosphere, and then men shifted uneasily. Nero Studd's dark face turned slowly around the semicircle, deliberately blank.
"I was a-waiting for a crack like that," drawled young Heck Seastrom indolently. "In answer to which I will say there sure is plenty of other ways. Hiding behind the brush, for example, and taking pot shots. Was that the way you thought of, fella?"
Clint Charterhouse felt a pull of admiration for Seastrom's easy-going manner. The burly young puncher bubbled over with vital humor; and not even the threat of trouble could change him much. But Nero Studd suddenly shifted and broke the dangerous moment, speaking with a gruff jest. "Wait till Buck Manners comes around, Seastrom. He'll peg that trick of yours right off the bat."
"Will he?" challenged Seastrom. "Say, I figured out this stunt with just him in mind. Blame near busted my back finding a rock heavy enough, just to stop that particular gent. Wait and see."
"A month's pay he can lift it," offered Studd.
"Took," agreed Heck Seastrom. "I got something finally which is sure a-going to frazzle him. If it don't, I'll be the cross- eyed son of a cross-eyed father."
Traffic at the bar resumed and Nero Studd moved through the room, passing a word here and there, occasionally resting his heavy arm on some man's shoulder. Clint Charterhouse let his attention follow this saloon proprietor for quite a while; then he turned to a barkeep. "Give me a pint of straight, uncut alcohol."
The barkeep was diverted out of his heavy indifference. "Must be packing a big thirst," said he. But Charterhouse paid for the pint and walked silently out of the place with the bottle in his hand. Crossing the plaza, he went down the stable alley to his horse and began to rub the alcohol on the animal's back.
Over in front of the saloon a pair of men slouched against a porch and watched him.
"Massaging that horse with good liquor," said one. "Must like that horse," said the other, narrowing his lids.
"Must be a real good horse," added the first. They exchanged solemn glances. Number One nodded slightly at Number Two.
CHAPTER II
At the northeast corner of the plaza stood Madame LeSeur's house, which was all that Casabella could claim in the line of hotel, eating place and rendezvous for social affairs. Madame was a stout square woman with traces of former beauty, and a witty, sharp-tongued kindness. It was common belief that in earlier days she had been the toast of a dance hall in far off Deadwood, a belief she neither confirmed nor denied. Not that it mattered here, for Casabella implicitly believed anybody's past was his or her own affair. All it positively knew was that Madame LeSeur had drifted into Angels, built this ramshackle place with a three-sided porch, divided the second story into innumerable cubicles for sleeping purposes, and arranged the downstairs into kitchen, dining room and a vast lobby with crystal chandeliers.
According to Madame's own statement, the bedrooms were of two kinds. Those large enough for a horse to turn around in were "double" and worth fifty cents the sleep. Those too narrow to pass the horse-turning test were "singles" at two bits the throw. Many a puncher, whose last alcoholic remembrance had been of slumping into the watering trough of the plaza, had wakened in one of Madame's rooms, charitably housed by her orders. To all such gentlemen's embarrassed thanks she invariably retorted that business was business and she had to fill up her house one way or another; and the bill would be a quarter-dollar, if you please, with no charge for cartage.
The lobby had been the scene of famous events, and today another was in the making. For in this lobby were gathered men, ranchers and townsmen, bent on threshing out a question never yet solved in Casabella—the question of peace.
Some were seated at the big round table. Buck Manners was in his chair, seesawing it on the back legs. Buck was the slim and smiling man Clint Charterhouse had seen crossing the plaza a few minutes earlier. He was seated and still showed a good-natured expression, even though the single flip of a phrase threatened to turn the town into a blaze of war. Sheriff Drop Wolfert was seated, too. His hands were lying flat on the table's surface, and his narrowed, sulky eyes were following around from man to man. Never amiable, his temper was further inflamed this afternoon from knowing that his authority was scornfully questioned and his motives doubted. Beef Graney sat next to the sheriff. Beef was a figure with a few dubious acres of range and a small scattering of stock. He was slyly keeping his eyes down. There was no mistaking the ruddy bull-dog of a man who dominated the meeting. John Nickum was of the Western type that produced the great cattle kings. Even now when the middle fifties had fleshed up his big bones and shot his hair with gray, there still remained the chill blue directness of his eyes that signaled relentless personal courage. Kindly, jovial, never forsaking a friend nor committing deliberate meanness, he possessed all the old baronial virtues.
His faults sprang from the same source. He had fought too hard in his life to forgive an enemy; to them he was ruthless. For him there was no middle ground, no mellowed tolerance. The qualities of the land itself were in him, and he could not change. He had seen good men fall and the lesson of their lives had stiffened his own rugged back. Piece by piece the great Box M had been wrung from his sweat and scheming; every step of the way he had been harried by the inevitable outlaws who snapped at his flanks. Blow for blow he had fought them without pity; now that his power was again being undermined he placed his back to the wall and roared his challenge.
"I am able to take care of my own quarrels," he said stiffly. "Nevertheless, I called you here to tell you and warn you that a pack of yellow hounds are building up their machine to wreck me. If they succeed, they will wreck you as well. I have cleaned up more than one magpie's nest in my time. I have the power still to do it."
"Fine talk," broke in Shander, another powerful rancher, pressing the words between his thin lips. "Since you are all wound up, suppose you mention some names? Who are these yellow dogs you mention?"
Old John Nickum's cold glance struck Shander. "I will take my own pleasure about that," said he.
"You take your own pleasure about a great many things," snapped Shander. "Too many things, if you ask me. Big as your damned outfit is, I am not afraid to stand up and speak my piece. Every man in this room understands who you are talking against. I'll just challenge you to state a few facts."
Both Sheriff Wolfert and Beef Graney lifted their heads in seeming assent, though Wolfert immediately covered his expression and tried to look neutral. Buck Manners laughed softly at him.
"So—facts?" muttered Nickum. "Here is one fact. Casabella's got a large floating population in the last few months that lifts no single hand in honest labor. You know what that means as well as I do. Take a count of Curly's outfit right now and you'd find it shot with the worst thieves and knife artists along the Border. I can go out to the street and point out six of his damned crew snoozing in the shade. I once was easy on him, and now he's the coldest leader of hired killers ever forked saddle in this country."
"Lay that to Casabella's salubrious climate," said Shan-der with evident sarcasm. "Can't deny any man's right to jump a county line for saftey, can you? Since when have you got so moral, anyhow? I'm prepared to say you've got riders in your own outfit whose pasts won't bear daylight. Who cares?"
"I will state another fact," went on old John Nickum, sweeping Shander's words aside. "On this very day we have a meeting, Angels is crowded with