Anastacio's cheek as
he rose.

"But don't promise my place to any of them, sheriff. I might hear of
it."

"Stranger," said Ben Creagan, "you can't play pool! I can't--and I
beat you four straight games. You better toddle your little trotters
off to bed." The words alone might have been mere playfulness; glance
and tone made plain the purposed offense.

The after-supper crowd in the hotel barroom had suddenly slipped away,
leaving Max Barkeep, three others, and John Wesley Pringle--the last
not unnoting of nudge and whisper attending the exodus. Since that,
Pringle had suffered, unprotesting, more gratuitous insults than
he had met in all the rest of his stormy years. His curiosity was
aroused; he played the stupid, unseeing, patient, and timid person he
was so eminently not. Plainly these people desired his absence; and
Pringle highly resolved to know why. He now blinked mildly.

"But I'm not sleepy a-tall," he objected.

He tried and missed an easy shot; he chalked his cue with assiduous
care.

"Here, you! Quit knockin' those balls round!" bawled Max, the
bartender. "What you think this is--a kindergarten?"

"Why, I paid for all the games I lost, didn't I?" asked Pringle, much
abashed.

He mopped his face. It was warm, though the windows and doors were
open.

"Well, nobody's going to play any more with you," snapped Max. "You
bore 'em."

He pyramided the balls and covered the table. With a sad and lingering
backward look Pringle slouched abjectly through the wide-arched
doorway to the bar.

"Come on, fellers--have something."

"Naw!" snarled Jose Espalin. "I'm a-tryin' to theenk. Shut up, won't
you?"

Pringle sighed patiently at the rebuff and stole a timid glance at the
thinker. Espalin was a lean little, dried-up manikin, with legs,
arms, and mustaches disproportionately long for his dwarfish body. His
black, wiry hair hung in ragged witchlocks; his black pin-point eyes
were glittering, cold, and venomous. He looked, thought Pringle, very
much like a spider.

"I'm steerin' you right, old man," said Creagan. "You'd better drag it
for bed."

"I ain't sleepy, I tell you."

Espalin leaped up, snarling.

"Say! You lukeing for troubles, maybe? Bell, I theenk thees _hombre_
got a gun. Shall we freesk him?"

As he flung the query over his shoulder his beady little eyes did not
leave Pringle's.

Bell Applegate got leisurely to his feet--a tall man, well set up,
with a smooth-shaved, florid face a