happened."

Roy grinned and rubbed his hands together in a dark delight, almost
fiendish in its sudden revelation of a gulf of strange emotion deep
within him. Whatever had happened to Riggs had not been too much for
Roy Beeman. Helen remembered hearing her uncle say that a real Westerner
hated nothing so hard as the swaggering desperado, the make-believe
gunman who pretended to sail under the true, wild, and reckoning colors
of the West.

Roy leaned his lithe, tall form against the stone mantelpiece and faced
the girls.

"When I rode out after Las Vegas I seen him 'way down the road," began
Roy, rapidly. "An' I seen another man ridin' down into Pine from the
other side. Thet was Riggs, only I didn't know it then. Las Vegas rode
up to the store, where some fellars was hangin' round, an' he spoke to
them. When I come up they was all headin' for Turner's saloon. I seen a
dozen hosses hitched to the rails. Las Vegas rode on. But I got off at
Turner's an' went in with the bunch. Whatever it was Las Vegas said
to them fellars, shore they didn't give him away. Pretty soon more men
strolled into Turner's an' there got to be 'most twenty altogether, I
reckon. Jeff Mulvey was there with his pards. They had been drinkin'
sorta free. An' I didn't like the way Mulvey watched me. So I went
out an' into the store, but kept a-lookin' for Las Vegas. He wasn't in
sight. But I seen Riggs ridin' up. Now, Turner's is where Riggs hangs
out an' does his braggin'. He looked powerful deep an' thoughtful,
dismounted slow without seein' the unusual number of hosses there, an'
then he slouches into Turner's. No more 'n a minute after Las Vegas rode
down there like a streak. An' just as quick he was off an' through thet
door."

Roy paused as if to gain force or to choose his words. His tale now
appeared all directed to Bo, who gazed at him, spellbound, a fascinated
listener.

"Before I got to Turner's door--an' thet was only a little ways--I heard
Las Vegas yell. Did you ever hear him? Wal, he's got the wildest yell
of any cow-puncher I ever beard. Quicklike I opened the door an' slipped
in. There was Riggs an' Las Vegas alone in the center of the big saloon,
with the crowd edgin' to the walls an' slidin' back of the bar. Riggs
was whiter 'n a dead man. I didn't hear an' I don't know what Las Vegas
yelled at him. But Riggs knew an' so did the gang. All of a sudden every
man there shore seen in Las Vegas what Riggs had always bragged HE was.