in' about me, I'll be in either the store or the saloon."

"There's where he is, Duke--in the saloon."

"I supposed he was."

"You'll kind of run into him natural, won't you, Duke, and not let him
think I tipped you off?"

"Just as natural as the wind."

Lambert went out. From the hitching-rack he saw Wood at his post of
vigil in the door, watching the road with anxious mien. It was a
Saturday night; the town was full of visitors. Lambert went on to the
saloon, hitching at the long rack in front where twenty or thirty horses
stood.

The custom of the country made it almost an obligatory courtesy to go in
and spend money when one hitched in front of a saloon, an excuse for
entering that Lambert accepted with a grim feeling of satisfaction.
While he didn't want it to appear that he was crowding a quarrel with
any man, the best way to meet a fellow who had gone spreading it abroad
that he was out looking for one was to go where he was to be found. It
wouldn't look right to leave town without giving Hargus a chance to
state his business; it would be a move subject to misinterpretation, and
damaging to a man's good name.

There was a crowd in the saloon, which had a smoky, blurred look through
the open door. Some of the old gambling gear had been uncovered and
pushed out from the wall. A faro game was running, with a dozen or more
players, at the end of the bar; several poker tables stretched across
the gloomy front of what had been the ballroom of more hilarious days.
These players were a noisy outfit. Little money was being risked, but
it was going with enough profanity to melt it.

Lambert stood at the end of the bar near the door, his liquor in his
hand, lounging in his careless attitude of abstraction. But there was
not a lax fiber in his body; every faculty was alert, every nerve set
for any sudden development. The scene before him was disgusting, rather
than diverting, in its squalid imitation of the rough-and-ready times
which had passed before many of these men were old enough to carry the
weight of a gun. It was just a sporadic outburst, a pustule come to a
sudden head that would burst before morning and clear away.

Lambert ran his eye among the twenty-five or thirty men in the place.
All appeared to be strangers to him. He began to assort their faces, as
one searches for something in a heap, trying to fix on one that looked
mean enough to belong to a Hargus. A mechanical banjo suddenly added its
metall