favor me by sittin' down?"
The lady blinked her unfocused eyes.
"Ain't I what?" she was finally able to ask.
"I know," said Buck Daniels swiftly, "that you're terrible busy; which you ain't got time to waste on a stranger like me."
She turned upon Buck those uncertain and wistful eyes. It was a generous face. Mouth, cheekbones, and jaw were of vast proportions, while the forehead, eyes, and nose were as remarkably diminutive. Her glance lowered to the floor; she shrugged her wide shoulders and began to wipe the vestiges of dishwater from her freckled hands.
"You men are terrible foolish," she said. "There ain't no tellin' what you mean by what you say."
And she sank slowly into the chair. It gave voice in sharp protest at her weight. Buck Daniels retreated to the opposite side of the table and took his place.
"Ma'am," he began, "don't I look honest?" So saying, he slid half a dozen eggs and a section of bacon from the platter to his plate.
"I dunno," said the maiden, with one eye upon him and the other plunging into the future. "There ain't no trusting men. Take 'em by the lot and they're awful forgetful."
"If you knowed me better," said Buck sadly, disposing of a slab of bread spread thick with the pale butter and following this with a pile of fried potatoes astutely balanced on his knife. "If you knowed me better, ma'am, you wouldn't have no suspicions."
"What might it be that you been doin'?" asked the girl.
Buck Daniels paused in his attack on the food and stared at her.
He quoted deftly from a magazine which had once fallen in his way: "Some day maybe I can tell you. There's something about your eyes that tells me you'd understand."
At the mention of her eyes the waitress blinked and stiffened in her chair, while a huge, red fist balled itself in readiness for action. But the expression of Buck Daniels was as blandly open as the smile of infancy. The lady relaxed and an unmistakable blush tinged even her nose with colour.
"It ain't after my nature to be askin' questions," she announced. "You don't have to tell me no more'n you want to."
"Thanks," said Buck instantly. "I knew you was that kind. It ain't hard," he went on smoothly, "to tell a lady when you see one. I can tell you this much to start with. I'm lookin' for a quiet town where I can settle down permanent. And as far as I can see, Brownsville looks sort of quiet to me."
So saying, he disposed of the rest of his food by an act akin to legerdemain, and then fastened a keen eye upon the lady. She was in the midst of a struggle of some sort. But she could not keep the truth from her tongue.
"Take it by and large," she said at length, "Brownsville is as peaceable as most; but just now, stranger, it's all set for a big bust." She turned heavily in her chair and glanced about the room. Then she faced Daniels once more and cupped her hands about her mouth. "Stranger," she said in a stage whisper, "Mac Strann is in town!"
The eyes of Buck Daniels wandered.
"Don't you know him?" she asked.
"Nope."
"Never heard of him?"
"Nope."
"Well," sighed the waitress, "you've had some luck in your life. Take a cross between a bulldog and a mustang and a mountain-lion—that's Mac Strann. He's in town, and he's here for killin'."
"You don't say, ma'am. And why don't they lock him up?"
"Because he ain't done nothin' yet to be locked up about. That's the way with him. And when he does a thing he always makes the man he's after pull his gun first. Smart? I'll say he's just like an Indian, that Mac Strann!"
"But who's he after?"
"The feller that plugged his brother, Jerry."
"Kind of looks like he had reason for a killing, then."
"Nope. Jerry had it comin' to him. He was always raising trouble, Jerry was. And this time, he pulled his gun first. Everybody seen him."
"He run into a gunman?"
"Gunman?" she laughed heartily. "Partner, if it wasn't for something funny about his eyes, I wouldn't be no more afraid of that gunman than I am of a tabby-cat. And me a weak woman. The quietest lookin' sort that ever come to Brownsville. But there's something queer about him. He knows that Mac Strann is here in town. He knows that Mac Strann is waiting for Jerry to die. He knows that when Jerry dies Mac will be out for a killin'. And this here stranger is just sittin' around and waitin' to be killed! Can you beat that?"
But Buck Daniels had grown strangely excited.
"What did you say there was about his eyes?" he asked sharply.
She grew suddenly suspicious.
"D' you know him?"
"No. But you was talkin' about his eyes?"
"I dunno what it is. I ain't the only one that's seen it. There ain't no word you can put to it. It's just there. That's all."
The voice of Buck Daniels fell to a whisper.
"It's sort of fire," he suggested. "Ain't it a kind of light behind his eyes?"
But the waitress stared at him in amazement.
"Fire?" she gasped. "A light behind his eyes? M'frien', are you tryin' to string me?"
"What's his name?"
"I dunno."
"Ma'am," said Daniels, rising hastily. "Here's a dollar if you'll take me to him."
"You don't need no guide," she replied. "Listen to that, will you?"
And as he hearkened obediently Buck Daniels heard a strain of whistling, needle-sharp with distance.
"That's him," nodded the woman. "He's always goin' about whistling to himself. Kind of a nut, he is."
"It's him!" cried Buck Daniels. "It's him!"
And with this ungrammatical burst of joy he bolted from the room.
XIII. THE THREE
The whistling came from behind the hotel, and although it ended as soon as he reached the veranda of the building, Buck Daniels hurried to the rear of the place. There were the long, low sheds of the barn, and behind these, he knew, must be the corrals. He raced around the corner of the shed and there came to a halt, for he saw a thing that turned his blood to ice.
One of those rare rains of the mountain-desert had recently fallen and the corrals behind the barn were carpeted with a short, thick grass. In the small corral nearest him he beheld, rolling on that carpet of grass, a great
