the air shooting through the brakes. This car would be moving in another moment. A brakeman ran down alongside the train. Thanks to the rain he had not come across the tops!
Some one shouted, a lantern waved, the train tensed as if to spring forward. A grinding, tearing sound, the lurching of the big car, and then the long-drawn, piercing whistle.
It was for this he had waited. Reaching in through the window, he fired!
Gloating, wholly evil, the murderer’s face gleamed in the streaming light. The train was moving—taking him away to safety. The sound of the shot has been lost, dimmed by the noise of the storm and the piercing blast of the whistle.
He had played it to the last line! Cross Traynor had been erased. There’d be no coming back this time. He saw him half out of bed, his head on the floor—a gory relic of what had been a man.
With an easy toss the killer dropped the dead man’s gun to the floor beside the body. That was the last, final touch! It made the slayer smile.
“That’s that, I guess. Dead—and by his own gun, too! Cross, you’ll never come back now.”
The train was gathering speed. The man flattened himself out. At the shipping pens the freight moved upon the main track. This slowing down was the awaited moment. Unseen, the man who had killed so easily slipped to the ground. The wool hook which had served him so well was tossed into the sage. Then, with sure step, he moved away in the night. This affair was a thing of the past. Who was there to question him?
CHAPTER III
BY HIS OWN HAND
In the Palace bar all was merry. To the casual eye Scanlon might have appeared an exception, a frosted flower in a garden of flaming blooms; but even his moroseness was giving way to a sly smile. Four mysterious aces had but recently appeared in Stub Rawlings’s hand. The Scanlon bank roll had been severely injured. The source of that handful of cards had sorely troubled the red-headed boss of the Palace. He had become conscious of the storm raging without, but he had not so much as cast a glance at the streaming windows. Mr. Rawlings’s play was of greater interest.
Lady Luck began to smile on the house. Scanlon’s stack of blue chips increased to dizzy heights. He now held Mr. Rawlings’s aces. He played them much better than Stub had. In fact, so well did he maneuver that when the Diamond-Bar man called, the game was over as far as Stub was concerned.
In the interval Scanlon flashed questioning eyes at the windows. Impatiently then he called to Vin: “The windows, Vin! Upstairs—shut the windows! This damn place’ll be floatin’ away if you don’t.”
Vin had been much the busier of the two. But that was as usual. He scowled now, though. Scanlon had been piling straws on the Basque’s back for some years. This threatened to be the one too many. Tomorrow he would brood over any damage done to the hotel; but now he was angry only with Scanlon. “Madre de Dios!” he growled. “I do all these worries for theese firm. I scrub those floors, I mak’ those bed, I wash those window—by Chris’, I not close them.”
“Aw, go on, Vinnie,” the boisterous Stuffy exclaimed, “and be damn glad you ain’t livin’ in Awregon where they really got rain.”
“That’s him!” Scanlon snorted. “Always tellin’ what he does round here. Jest workin’ yerself to death, ain’t yuh? Humph! If it wasn’t fer my brains we wouldn’t have no hotel.” He turned back to his game. “Let ’er rain,” he roared. “I can swim.”
This indifference to their mutual prosperity seared the Basque’s soul, but he rolled up his apron and started for the stairs, the air blue with his cursing. “By damn, I soon git my own hotel, you Irish gringo!” he hurled at his partner.
The crowd tittered. Vin’s troubles were well understood. A moment later the Basque was back at the head of the stairs, white of face, hands shaking.
“Socorro—help! Man ees keel heemself! I guess you come like hell now, Scanlon.”
A hush fell upon the crowded barroom. Little noises were stilled until only the soft slip-slip of the cards running through Scanlon’s fingers broke the silence. Sudden, or mysterious, death was quite as chilling in Standing Rock as in more sophisticated circles.
The tension held for a brief spell. Hobe Ferris was the first to move. A moment later the crowd was pouring up the stairs.
Traynor lay as the killer had left him—half out of bed, his gun near his lifeless hand.
Scanlon bent over and examined the powder marks on the man’s forehead. “Never seen him before,” said he as he straightened up. “This is Stuffy’s room, Vin. How’d he git up here?”
“Man came ’fore supper. Say he only want to sleep till the rain ees past. I say take theese room. What diff’rence eet make? Stuffy not go to baid tonight.”
“You said somethin’, Vinnie. I ain’t ever goin’ to sleep in that bed.”
“Dry up,” Hobe ordered. “We’d better git Doc Ritter. The doc and the old man are playin’ pinochle in his office. I saw ’em across the street. Run over and git him, Stub.”
“Ain’t no need gittin’ a doctor,” Scanlon said positively. “This is a job for the coroner. The man’s as dead as a man can git. Gallup is the only one that can be of any use here.”
“Yeh, I guess yo’re right, Scanlon. Fine lookin’ man, that. Wonder where he came from? Ain’t none of y’u boys ever seen him?”
The crowd edged closer to the dead man; but no one seemed to remember him.
“I’ll go for Gallup,” Stub offered. “He’ll sure be riled, gittin’ out of bed this time of the night. He goes to the hay with the chickens.”
Stub’s going seemed to unloosen the crowd’s tongue. A dozen conjectures were voiced, and either denied or affirmed. Hobe brought them up, standing, by his discovery that no one had heard the shot which had killed the man.
Scanlon turned on his partner, his mouth sagging a trifle. This thing had a queer draw to it. “Vin,” he argued, “you ain’t been out of the house. Didn’t you hear nothin’?”
“I don’ hear anyt’ing. But theese señor have foony look in hees eye. Mak’ me feel leetla chill in the back. I ask hees name; Caramba! He say he ees pretty well forget how to mak’ those writings in book.”
“Sort of a mysterious gent, eh?” Scanlon asked, unpleasantly.
“His name’s his own business,” Hobe flared back. “He might have been considerate enough to bump hisself off somewheres else; but I pretty well wouldn’t like to have anybody tellin’ me my name wa’n’t my own business.”
The Diamond-Bar foreman rightly suspected that Scanlon’s annoyance was largely due to the fact that this affair would throw a wet blanket on the spending of money. He had been waiting some three months for this harvest.
Gallup, the coroner, and Stub returned at this moment, and Scanlon was saved replying to the challenge in Hobe’s words.
“What’s all the trouble?” Gallup demanded when he had entered the room.
“It’s
