whoop.

"Hi there, Malpais! What's doing in the hills these yere pleasant days?"

"A little o' nothin', Sam. The way they're telling it you been having
all the fun down here."

Sam Wilcox gathered the chips pushed toward him by the croupier and
cashed in. He was a heavy-set, bronzed man, with a bleached,
straw-colored mustache. Taking his friend by the arm, he led him to one
end of the bar that happened for the moment to be deserted.

"Have something, Jim. Oh, I forgot. You're ridin' the water wagon and
don't irrigate. More'n I can say for some of you Malpais lads. Some of
them was in here right woozy the other day."

"The boys will act the fool when they hit town. Who was it?"

"Slim and Budd and young Sanderson."

"Was Phil Sanderson drunk?" Yeager asked, hardly surprised, but
certainly troubled.

"I ain't sure he was, but he was makin' the fur fly at the wheel, there.
Must have dropped two hundred dollars."

Jim's brows knit in a puzzled frown. He was wondering how the boy had
come by so much money at a time.

"Who was he trailin' with?"

"With a lad called Spiker, that fair-haired guy sitting in at the poker
table. He's another youngster that has been dropping money right
plentiful."

"Who is he?"

"He's what they call a showfer. He runs one o' these automobiles; takes
parties out in it."

"Been here long? Looks kind o' like a tinhorn gambler."

"Not long. He's thick with some of you Malpais gents. I've seen him with
Healy a few."

"Oh, with Healy."

Jim regarded the sportive youth more attentively, and presently dropped
into a vacant seat beside him, buying twenty dollars worth of chips.

Spiker was losing steadily. He did not play either a careful or a
brilliant game. Jim, playing very conservatively, and just about holding
his own, listened to the angry bursts and the boastings of the man next
him, and drew his own conclusions as to his character. After a couple of
hours of play the Malpais man cashed in and went back to the hotel where
he was putting up.

He slept till late, ate breakfast leisurely, and after an hour of
looking over the paper and gossiping with the hotel clerk about the
holdup he called casually upon the deputy sheriff. Only one thing of
importance he gleaned from him. This was that the roan with the white
stockings had been picked up seven miles from Noches the morning after
the holdup.

This put a crimp in Healy's story of having seen Keller in the Pass on
the anim