ight wrist and his left arm were still fresh, and this town was
the Bedloes' town in more ways than one.

He nodded to a few men, spoke to fewer, for here was he more a stranger
than he was in Dry Town. Riding straight to the Brown Bear Saloon he
swung down. He left his horse, trained to stand by the hour for him, at
the edge of the board sidewalk, the bridle reins caught around the horn
of the saddle, moved at an even pace through the men at the door and
went inside.

A dozen men stood at the long bar, big men and little, dark men and
light, of this nationality and that, but alike in the one essential
thing that they were of the type by which the far-out places are wrested
from the wilderness of God and made part of the wildness of man, hard
men of tongue, of hand, of nature, hard drinkers, hard fighters. Gunmen,
to the last man of them, who live with a gun always, by a gun often
enough, who are dropping fast before the onrush of the civilization for
which they themselves have made the way, but who will daily walk over
their graves until the glimmer of steel rails runs into the last of the
far places, until there be no longer wide, unfenced miles where cattle
run free and rugged mountain sides into which men dip to bring out red
and yellow gold.

Thornton's eyes ran down the line of them, swiftly. There was no man
there whom he knew. He stepped a little to one side, the door at his
left, the bare front wall at his back. He stood loosely, carelessly to
judge from the little slump of the shoulders, the burning cigarette in
the fingers of his left hand, the thumb of the right hand caught in his
belt.

The bar was at his left, the bare floor running away in front of him,
sawdust covered, the string of gaming tables stretched along the wall at
his right. As by instinct his eyes lighted upon the man whom he sought.
First a round topped table where three men cut and dealt at "stud";
then a faro lay-out with its quick-eyed dealer, its quick-eyed look-out
upon his stool, its half dozen men playing and looking on; then the
"wheel"; then a second table with six men busy at "draw." There, at this
table, with his broad back to him, sat the Kid. And as usual, to complete
the youthful swagger of him, he wore his two guns in plain sight.

Still the cattle man made no move, still his eyes ran back and forth,
seeking, showing nothing of what they sought or of what they had found
already. He marked every man in the place; saw that t