arless faces, broad-throated,
belted and shifted, and with brawny arms for pick and sledge and
doublejack, moved to and from the bar like desert travelers breathing in
an oasis. Men from the short spillway valleys of the Superstition
Range--the coyotes and wolves of the Spanish Sinks--were easily to be
identified by their shifty eyes and loud laughter and handy six-shooters.
Moving in a little group rather apart from these than mingling with them,
talking and drinking more among themselves, were men from the Falling
Wall--men professedly "ranching" on the upper waters of the Horse, the
Turkey and Crazy Woman creeks, tributaries of the Falling Wall river--in
point of fact, rustlers between whom and the big cattlemen of the range
there always existed a deadly enmity and at times open warfare.

At two card tables placed together in the upper inner corner of the room
sat a little party of these Falling Wall men smoking and drinking in
leisurely, or, more correctly, in preliminary fashion, for the evening
was still young; and inspecting the moving crowd at the bar. At the head
of the table sat the ex-cowboy and ex-pugilist, Stormy German, his face
usually, and now, reddened with liquor--square-shouldered, square-faced
and squat; a man harsh-voiced and terse, of iron endurance and with the
stubbornness of a mule; next him sat Yankee Robinson, thin-faced and
wearing a weatherbeaten yellow beard. And Dutch Henry was there--bony,
nervous, eager-eyed, with broken English stories of drought and hardship
on the upper Turkey. These three men--brains and resource of several
less able but not less unscrupulous companions who preyed on the cattle
range north of Sleepy Cat--led the talk and were the most carefully
listened to by the men that surrounded them.

It was later that two men entered the room from the hotel office
together. The contained, defiant walk of the slightly heavier and taller
of the two was characteristic, and without the black beard, deep eyes and
the pallor of his face, would almost have identified him as Abe Hawk;
while in the emotionless, sandy features of his companion and in his more
frank, careless make-up, the widely known ranchman of the Falling Wall,
Jim Laramie, was easily recognized.

Hawk, separating from his companion, walked to the right. German hailed
him and Hawk paused before the table at which the former prize fighter
sat with his friends. Each of these in turn had something effusive to
say