of impending disaster and action. What he saw was a long, low
apartment, the bare rafters overhead browned by the kitchen smoke, which
even now was rolling in from the wide door at the end of the room--the
thick, oily smoke of burnt meat mingled with steam and the nameless
vapours of a great oven.

There was no semblance of a decoration on the walls; the boards were not
even painted. It was strictly a place for use, not pleasure. The food
itself which Shorty Kilrain and Calamity Ben now brought on was
distinctly utilitarian rather than appetizing. The piece de resistance
was a monstrous platter heaped high with beefsteak, not the inviting
meat of a restaurant in a civilized city, but thin, brown slabs, fried
dry throughout. The real nourishment was in the gravy in which the steak
swam. In a dish of even more amazing proportions was a vast heap of
potatoes boiled with their jackets on. Lawlor commenced loading the
stack of plates before him, each with a slab and a potato or two.

Meantime from a umber of big coffee pots a stream of a liquid, bitter as
lye and black as night, was poured into the tin cups. Yet the cattlemen
about the table settled themselves for the meal with a pleasant
expectation fully equal to that of the most seasoned gourmand in a
Manhattan restaurant.

The peculiar cowboy's squint--a frowning of the brow and a compression
of the thin lips--relaxed. That frown came from the steady effort to
shade the eyes from the white-hot sunlight; the compression of the lips
was due to a determination to admit none of the air, laden with alkali
dust, except through the nostrils. It grew in time into a perpetual
grimace, so that the expression of an old range rider is that of a man
steeling himself to pass through some grim ordeal.

Now as they relaxed, Anthony perceived first of all that most of the
grimness passed away from the narrowed eyes and they lighted instead
with good-humoured banter, though of a weary nature. One by one, they
cast off ten years of age; the lines rubbed out; the jaws which had
thrust out grew normal; the leaning heads straightened and went back.

They paid not the slightest attention to the newcomer, talking easily
among themselves, but Anthony was certain that at least some of them
were thinking of him. If they said nothing, their thoughts were the
more.

In fact, in the meantime little Duffy had passed on to the next man, in
a side mutter, the significant phrase: "He knows!" It wen