r her.

Before he had been an hour at Epitaph the sheriff knew he had struck
gold this time. Men were in town spending money lavishly, and at a rough
description they answered to the ones he wanted. Into the Gold Nugget
Saloon that evening dropped Val Collins, big, blond, and jaunty.
He looked far less the vigorous sheriff out for business than the
gregarious cowpuncher on a search for amusement.

Del Hawkes, an old-time friend of his staging days, pounced on him and
dragged him to the bar, whence his glance fell genially on the roulette
wheel and its devotees, wandered casually across the impassive poker
and Mexican monte players, took in the enthroned musicians, who were
industriously murdering "La Paloma," and came to rest for barely an
instant at a distant faro table. In the curly-haired good-looking young
fellow facing the dealer he saw one of the men he had come seeking. Nor
did he need to look for the hand with the missing trigger finger to be
sure it was York Neil--that same gay, merry-hearted York with whom he
used to ride the range, changed now to a miscreant who had elected to
take the short cut to wealth.

But the man beside Neil, the dark-haired, pallid fellow from whose
presence something at once formidable and sinister and yet gallant
seemed to breathe--the very sight of him set the mind of Collins at work
busily upon a wild guess. Surely here was a worthy figure upon whom to
set the name and reputation of the notorious Wolf Leroy.

Yet the sheriff's eyes rested scarce an instant before they went
traveling again, for he wanted to show as yet no special interest in the
object of his suspicions. The gathering was a motley one, picturesque in
its diversity. For here had drifted not only the stranded derelicts of
a frontier civilization, but selected types of all the turbid elements
that go to make up its success. Mexican, millionaire, and miner brushed
shoulders at the roulette-wheel. Chinaman and cow-puncher, Papago and
plainsman, tourist and tailor, bucked the tiger side by side with a
democracy found nowhere else in the world. The click of the wheel, the
monotonous call of the croupier, the murmur of many voices in alien
tongues, and the high-pitched jarring note of boisterous laughter, were
all merged in a medley of confusion as picturesque as the scene itself.

"Business not anyways slack at the Nugget," ventured Collins, to the
bartender.

"No, I don't know as 'tis. Nearly always somethin' doing