sitate to kill him if sufficient
provocation offered. Nor did this displease the autocrat of Showdown
in the least. He was accustomed to dealing with such men. Yet one
thing bothered him. Had the stranger made a get-away that would bring
a posse to Showdown--as the Mexican had intimated? If so the sooner
the visitor left, the better. If he were merely some cowboy looking
for easy money and excitement, that was a different matter. Or perhaps
he had but stolen a horse, or butchered and sold beef that bore a
neighbor's brand. Yet there was something about Pete that impressed
The Spider more deeply than mere horse- or cattle-stealing could. The
youth's eye was not the eye of a thief. He had not come to Showdown to
consort with rustlers. He was somewhat of a puzzle--but The Spider,
true to his name, was silently patient.

Meanwhile the desert sun rolled upward and onward, blazing down on the
huddled adobes, and slowly filtering into the room. With his back to
the bar, Pete idly flicked bits of a broken match at a knot-hole in the
floor. Tired of that, he rolled a cigarette with one hand, and
swiftly. Pete's hands were compact, of medium size, with the finger
joints lightly defined--the hands of a conjuror--or, as The Spider
thought, of a born gunman. And Pete was always doing something with
his hands, even when apparently oblivious to everything around him. A
novice at reading men would have considered him nervous. He was far
from nervous. This was proven to The Spider's satisfaction when Malvey
entered--"Bull" Malvey, red-headed, bluff and huge, of a gaunt frame,
with large-knuckled hands and big feet. Malvey tossed a coin on the
bar noisily, and in that one act Pete read him for what he was--a man
who "bullied" his way through life with much bluster and profanity, but
a man who, if he boasted, would make good his boast. What appeared to
be hearty good-nature in Malvey was in reality a certain blatantly
boisterous vigor--a vigor utterly soulless, and masking a nature at
bottom as treacherous as The Spider's--but in contrast squalid and
mean. Malvey would steal five dollars. The Spider would not touch a
job for less than five hundred. While cruel, treacherous, and a
killer, The Spider had nothing small or mean about him. And subtle to
a degree, he hated the blunt-spoken, blustering Malvey, but for reasons
unadvertised, called him friend.

"Have a drink?"

"Thanks." And Pete poured himself a notice