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A thousand dollars was a thousand dollars and there was no telling what a man who wore a nickel-plated star might have up his sleeve. "Mr. Breckenbridge," the cattle-buyer said as the two palms met, "is here on civil business." The eyes of Curly Bill resumed their normal shape. His fingers tightened over the deputy's. "Howdy," he said. "What yo' going to have?"
Now and again there was a warrant for stock-rustling, but the rustlers carried on their business in the open at that time and there were few who dared to testify against them. Bail was always arranged by the accommodating cattle-buyer at Galeyville, so that such arrests invariably turned out to be amicable affairs.
Just as he was congratulating himself on such easy pickings the cattle-buyer noticed him. John Slaughter was in his early thirties but his lips had settled into an unrelaxing line, and his eyes had grown narrow from the habit of the long sun-smitten trails. He was black-bearded, barely of middle stature, a parsimonious man when it came to using words.
He had turned his back on a drunken killer crazy for revenge and mocked the fellow at the risk of his life. Presently Roy and the cattle-buyer were bowling down the street behind Dingwell's fast young four-year-olds. The Denver man did not know that his host was as weak from the reaction of the strain as a child stricken with fear. At the Lazy Double D
But the accommodating cattle-buyer who arranged such matters for the bigger outlaws was out of town and would not be back until evening. Breckenbridge's horse was jaded, and if he wanted to reach Tombstone in good time he should be setting forth at once. "You go ahead," John Ringo bade him. "I'll catch up with you before you pass Sulphur Springs ranch."
"Well, there was nothing funny in it to me," said Carter, "and they say I never tell it twice alike." "Why, certainly, tell us," said the cattle-buyer. "I've never heard it. Don't throw off to-night." "It was a good many years ago," began old man George, "but the incident is very clear in my mind. I was working for a month's wages then myself. We were driving cattle out of Mexico.
The guest chamber usually allotted to him being needed for a lady, he had been sent to the bachelors' quarters a barrack-like dormitory amongst the outbuildings, very useful for the accommodation of the occasional 'vet' or cattle-buyer, and to take the overflow of company on festive occasions.
As the son of John Beaudry he was expected to show an unflawed nerve, whereas his eager desire was to run away and hide. He resisted the first panicky incitement to fly back to the Lazy Double D, and went doggedly about the business that had brought him to Battle Butte. Roy had come to meet a cattle-buyer from Denver and the man had wired that he would be in on the next train.
"Couldn't do it without hurting my conscience. Nineteen no culls. That's my last word." "I'd sure hate to injure your conscience, Dingwell," grinned the man from Denver. "Think I'll wait till you go to town and do business with your partner." "Think he's easy, do you?" "Easy!" The cattle-buyer turned the conversation to the subject uppermost in his mind.
He knew the crisis was upon him. The right hand of the hillman was hidden under the breast of his coat. Even the cattle-buyer from Denver knew what was in that hand and edged toward the train. For this ruffian was plainly working himself into a rage sufficient to launch murder. "Yore father railroaded me to the penitentiary cooked up testimony against me.
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