"Barry," he said, "I don't make you out. Maybe you figure to wait till
Mac Strann gets to town before you leave; maybe you think your hoss can
outrun anything on four feet. And maybe it can. But listen to me: Mac
Strann ain't fast on a trail, but the point about him is that he never
leaves it! You can go through rain and over rocks, but you can't never
shake Mac Strann--not once he gets the wind of you."

"Thanks," returned the gentle-voiced stranger. "I guess maybe he'll be
worth meeting."

And so saying he turned on his heel and walked calmly towards the big
stables behind the hotel and at his heels followed the black dog and the
black horse. As for deputy marshal Matthews, he moistened his lips to
whistle, but when he pursed them, not a sound came. He turned at length
into the barroom and as he walked his eye was vacant. He was humming
brokenly:

_"Sweet Adeline, my Adeline,
At night, dear heart, for you I pine."_

Inside, he took firm hold upon the bar with both pudgy hands.

"O'Brien," he said, "red-eye."

He pushed away the small glass which the bartender spun towards him and
seized in its place a mighty water-tumbler.

"O'Brien," he explained, "I need strength, not encouragement." And
filling the glass nearly to the brim he downed the huge potion at a
single draught.

CHAPTER XI

THE BUZZARD

Most animals have their human counterparts, and in that room where Jerry
Strann had fallen a whimsical observer might have termed Jerry, with his
tawny head, the lion, and O'Brien behind the bar, a shaggy bear, and the
deputy marshal a wolverine, fat but dangerous, and here stood a man as
ugly and hardened as a desert cayuse, and there was Dan Barry, sleek and
supple as a panther; but among the rest this whimsical observer must
have noticed a fellow of prodigious height and negligible breadth, a
structure of sinews and bones that promised to rattle in the wind, a
long, narrow head, a nose like a beak, tiny eyes set close together and
shining like polished buttons, and a vast Adam's apple that rolled up
and down the scraggy throat. He might have done for the spirit of Famine
in an old play; but every dweller of the mountain-desert would have
found an apter expression by calling him the buzzard of the scene.
Through his prodigious ugliness he was known far and wide as "Haw-Haw"
Langley; for on occasion Langley laughed, and his laughter was an
indescribable sound that lay somewhere between the bra