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Folks disagreed about the spooks. They all allowed as the place was haunted, but their notions wasn't just alike. Your poor father, child, was a man o' sense, an' he argued as plain as a tie-post. He said there was fabrications around that valley 'cause of the variating yarns, and I wouldn't gainsay him.
But he kept to his course and rode straight on to Carney's saloon. Here, as before, he dismounted. But he needed no help or guide. He straightway hooked his horse's reins over the tie-post and walked into the bar. The first man to greet him was his old acquaintance Slum Ranks. The little man looked up at him in a speculative manner, slanting his eyes at him in a way he remembered so well.
Breakfast was nearly over in the hotel, and, to judge by the number of saddle-horses at the tie-post, the people of Beacon Crossing were very much astir. Presently the verandah began to fill with hard-faced, rough-clad men. And most of them as they came were filling their pipes, which suggested that they had just eaten. Nevil Steyne was one of the earliest to emerge from the breakfast room.
The only building worth consideration is the hotel, opposite the depot. This has a verandah and a tie-post, and there are always horses standing outside it, and always men standing on the verandah, except when it is raining, then they are to be found inside. It was only a little after eight in the morning.
It was a large, two-storied frame house of weather-boarding, with a veranda fronting it. There were several windows on the hither side of it, but light shone only in one of them. It was by this light the horseman saw a tie-post some yards from the house. And without hesitation he rode up to it, and, dismounting, secured his mare.
"Hitch him to the tie-post an' ast in ther'," observed the uncommunicative man, pointing to a post a few yards from the door, but without losing interest in the other's nether garments. "That sounds reasonable." Tresler moved off and secured his horse and loosened the saddle-girths. "Pardon me, sir," he said, when he came back, his well-trimmed six feet towering over the other's five feet four.
Say, it's Seth o' White River Farm, and by the gait he's travelin', I'd gamble, Nevil, you don't cut that wood to-morrow. Seth don't usually ride hard." The whole attention on the verandah was centred on Seth, who was riding toward the hotel from across the track as hard as his horse could lay foot to the ground. In a few moments he drew up at the tie-post and flung off his horse.
Tethering his mare to a tie-post in front of the house he started up the walk, carrying his portfolio, so that in the event of any mistake he might be able to make it appear that he had merely come to take the census. But before he reached the door it was opened by a wrinkled and old, but dignified darky. "Walk in, sah, walk right in," he said. "Ah'll sen' one o' the boys to look after yo' horse.
Peter was the one to break the silence, and he ignored that which was in his thoughts. "Goin' to the ranch on foot, and by way of Eve's shack," he said in his gently humorous fashion. "Ye-es," responded Jim after a moment's thought. Then he added with a conscious laugh, "My 'plug' is back there at Rocket's tie-post, waiting, saddled." Then he went on, becoming suddenly earnest.
Nothing gripped his understanding nothing save the knowledge of what he had lost, and the conviction of the low-down trick that had been played upon him by one whom he regarded as a dear, younger brother. He drew rein at the saloon and flung out of the saddle. He mechanically hitched his horse to the tie-post.
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