verywhere.

Brown was gazing with gleaming eyes at the young card player over whose
shoulder the white-armed girl hung.

Then Pan saw a face that was strangely familiar--a handsome face of a
complexion between red and white, with large sensual mouth, bold eyes,
and a broad low brow. The young gambler was Dick Hardman.

Pan knew him. The recognition meant nothing, yet it gave Pan a start,
a twinge, and then sent a slow heat along his veins. He laughed to
find the boyishness of old still alive in him. After eight years of
hard life on the ranges! By that sudden resurging of long forgotten
emotion Pan judged the nature of what the years had made him. It would
be interesting to see how Dick Hardman met him.

But it was the girl who first seemed drawn by Pan's piercing gaze. She
caught it--then looked a second time. Sliding off the arms of
Hardman's chair she moved with undulating motion of her slender form,
and with bright eyes, round the table toward Pan. And at that moment
Dick Hardman looked up from his cards and watched her.

CHAPTER SIX

"Hello, cowboy. How'd I ever miss you?" she queried roguishly, running
her bright eyes from his face down to his spurs and back again.

"Good evening, Lady," replied Pan, removing his sombrero and bowing,
with his genial smile. "I just come to town."

She hesitated as if struck by a deference she was not accustomed to.
Then she took his hands in hers and dragged him out a little away from
Brown, whom she gave a curt nod. Again she looked Pan up and down.

"Did you take off that big hat because you know you're mighty good to
look at?" she asked, archly.

"Well, no, hardly," answered Pan.

"What for then?"

"It's a habit I have when I meet a pretty girl."

"Thank you. Does she have to be _pretty_?"

"Reckon not. Any girl, Miss."

"You are a stranger in Marco. Look out somebody doesn't shoot a hole
in that hat when you doff it."

While she smiled up at him, losing something of the hawklike,
possession-taking manner that had at first characterized her, Pan could
see Dick Hardman staring hard across the table. Before Pan could find
a reply for the girl one of the gamesters, an unshaven scowling fellow,
addressed Hardman.

"Say, air you playin' cairds or watchin' your dame make up to that big
hat an' high boots?"

Pan grasped the opportunity, though he never would have let that remark
pass under any circumstances. He disengaged his right hand fro