the street with
the choppy walk of the man out of a long saddle. Being both uncertain
and quick, he was a man to slip a trail easily. He travelled around
the block and disappeared among the many open doors that blazed along
Hill Street. Less alert trailers than the two behind him would have
been at fault; but when he entered the place he was looking for,
Kennedy was so close that Du Sang could have spoken to him had he
turned around.

Kennedy passed directly ahead. A moment later Whispering Smith put
his head inside the door of the joint Du Sang had entered, withdrew
it, and, rejoining his companions, spoke in an undertone: "A negro
dive; he's lying low. Now we will keep our regular order. It's a
half-basement, with a bar on the left; crap games at the table behind
the screen on the right. Kennedy, will you take the rear end of the
bar? It covers the whole room and the back door. George, pass in
ahead of me and step just to the left of the slot machine; you've
got the front door there and everything behind the screen, and I can
get close to Du Sang. Look for a thinnish, yellow-faced man with a
brown hat and a brown shirt--and pink eyes--shooting craps under this
window. I'll shoot craps with him. Is your heart pumping, George?
Never mind, this is easy! Farrell, you're first!"

The dive, badly lighted and ventilated, was counted tough among tough
places. White men and colored mixed before the bar and about the
tables. When Smith stepped around the screen and into the flare of the
hanging lamps, Du Sang stood in the small corner below the screened
street window. McCloud, though vitally interested in looking at the
man that had come to town to kill him, felt his attention continually
wandering back to Whispering Smith. The clatter of the rolling dice,
the guttural jargon of the negro gamblers, the drift of men to and
from the bar, and the clouds of tobacco smoke made a hazy background
for the stoop-shouldered man with his gray hat and shabby coat,
dust-covered and travel-stained. Industriously licking the broken
wrapper of a cheap cigar and rolling it fondly under his forefinger,
he was making his way unostentatiously toward Du Sang. Thirty-odd men
were in the saloon, but only two knew what the storm centre moving
slowly across the room might develop. Kennedy, seeing everything and
talking pleasantly with one of the barkeepers, his close-set teeth
gleaming twenty feet away, stood at the end of the bar sliding an
empty g