“Wal, I reckon there's not one honest native who KNOWS.”
“Give me your idea about this crowd that hangs round the saloons--the regulars.”
“Jest a bad lot,” replied Laramie, with the quick assurance of knowledge. “Most of them have been here years. Others have drifted in. Some of them work, odd times. They rustle a few steers, steal, rob, anythin' for a little money to drink an' gamble. Jest a bad lot!”
“Have you any idea whether Cheseldine and his gang are associated with this gang here?”
“Lord knows. I've always suspected them the same gang. None of us ever seen Cheseldine--an' thet's strange, when Knell, Poggin, Panhandle Smith, Blossom Kane, and Fletcher, they all ride here often. No, Poggin doesn't come often. But the others do. For thet matter, they're around all over west of the Pecos.”
“Now I'm puzzled over this,” said Duane. “Why do men--apparently honest men--seem to be so close-mouthed here? Is that a fact, or only my impression?”
“It's a sure fact,” replied Laramie, darkly. “Men have lost cattle an' property in Fairdale--lost them honestly or otherwise, as hasn't been proved. An' in some cases when they talked--hinted a little--they was found dead. Apparently held up an robbed. But dead. Dead men don't talk! Thet's why we're close mouthed.”
Duane felt a dark, somber sternness. Rustling cattle was not intolerable. Western Texas had gone on prospering, growing in spite of the hordes of rustlers ranging its vast stretches; but a cold, secret, murderous hold on a little struggling community was something too strange, too terrible for men to stand long.
The ranger was about to speak again when the clatter of hoofs interrupted him. Horses halted out in front, and one rider got down. Floyd Lawson entered. He called for tobacco.
If his visit surprised Laramie he did not show any evidence. But Lawson showed rage as he saw the ranger, and then a dark glint flitted from the eyes that shifted from Duane to Laramie and back again. Duane leaned easily against the counter.
“Say, that was a bad break of yours,” Lawson said. “If you come fooling round the ranch again there'll be hell.”
It seemed strange that a man who had lived west of the Pecos for ten years could not see in Duane something which forbade that kind of talk. It certainly was not nerve Lawson showed; men of courage were seldom intolerant. With the matchless nerve that characterized the great gunmen of the day there was a cool, unobtrusive manner, a speech brief, almost gentle, certainly courteous. Lawson was a hot-headed Louisianian of French extraction; a man, evidently, who had never been crossed in anything, and who was strong, brutal, passionate, which qualities in the face of a situation like this made him simply a fool.