"

"No; he's Nick's brother. I don't suppose you ever met him."

"I never heard of him."

"He's only been back from Wyoming a week or two. He was over there some
time--several years, I believe."

"In the pen over there?"

Wood took a careful survey of the door before replying, working his
cigar over to the other side of his mouth in the way that a one-armed
man acquires the trick.

"I--they say he got mixed up in a cattle deal down there."

Lambert smoked in silence a little while, his head bent, his face
thoughtful. Wood shifted a little nearer, standing straight and alert
behind his counter as if prepared to act in some sudden emergency.

"Does he live around here?" Lambert asked.

"He's workin' for Berry Kerr, foreman over there. That's the job he used
to have before he--left."

Lambert grunted, expressing that he understood the situation. He stood
in his leaning, careless posture, arm on the show case, thumb hooked in
his belt near his gun.

"I thought I'd tell you," said Wood uneasily.

"Thanks."

Wood came a step nearer along the counter, leaned his good arm on it,
watching the door without a break.

"He's one of the old gang that used to give Philbrook so much
trouble--he's carryin' lead that Philbrook shot into him now. So he's
got it in for that ranch, and everybody on it. I thought I'd tell you."

"I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Wood," said Lambert heartily.

"He's one of these kind of men you want to watch out for when your
back's turned, Duke."

"Thanks, old feller; I'll keep in mind what you say."

"I don't want it to look like I was on one side or the other, you
understand, Duke; but I thought I'd tell you. Sim Hargus is one of them
kind of men that a woman don't dare to show her face around where he is
without the risk of bein' insulted. He's a foul-mouthed, foul-minded
man, the kind of a feller that ought to be treated like a rattlesnake in
the road."

Lambert thanked him again for his friendly information, understanding at
once his watchful uneasiness and the absence of Alta from the front of
the house. He was familiar with that type of man such as Wood had
described Hargus as being; he had met some of them in the Bad Lands.
There was nothing holy to them in the heavens or the earth. They did not
believe there was any such thing as a virtuous woman, and honor was a
word they never had heard defined.

"I'll go out and look him up," Lambert said. "If he happens to come in
here ask