A clamor of amazement broke from the crowd, but the deputy looked steadily, without enthusiasm, at the stranger.
"Joe c.u.mber," he said, when the noise fell away a little, "I guess you"ll see the sheriff. Harry, take Joe c.u.mber up to Pete, will you?"
One of the bystanders jumped at the suggestion and led the other from the room, with a full half of the crowd following. The deputy remained behind, thoughtful.
"What"s the matter?" asked one of the spectators. "You look like you"d seen a ghost."
"Gents," answered the deputy, "do any of you recollect seein" this feller before?"
They did not.
"They"s something queer about him," muttered the deputy.
"He may be word-shy," proffered a wit, "but he sure ain"t gun-shy!"
"When he looked at me," said the deputy, more to himself than to the others, "it seemed to me like they was a swirl of yaller come into his eyes. Made me feel like some one had sneaked up behind me with a knife."
In his thoughtfulness his eyes wandered, and wandering, they fell upon the notice of the reward for the capture, dead or alive, of Daniel Barry, about five feet nine or ten, slender, with black hair and brown eyes.
"My G.o.d!" cried the deputy.
But then he relaxed against the counter.
"It ain"t possible," he murmured.
"What ain"t possible?"
"However, I"m goin" to go and hang around. Gents, I got a crazy idea."
He had no sooner started toward the door than he seemed to gain surety out of the motion.
"It"s him!" he cried. He turned toward the others, white of face. "Come on, all of you! It"s him! Barry!"
But in the meantime Harry had gone on swiftly to the office of the sheriff with "Joe c.u.mber." Behind him swirled the curious crowd and for their benefit he asked his questions loudly.
"Partner, that was sure a pretty play you made. I"ve seen "em all try out to crack them b.a.l.l.s, but I never seen none do it the way you did--with your gun in the leather at the start. What part of the country might you be from?"
The other answered gently: "Why, from over yonder."
"The T O outfit, eh?"
"Beyond that."
"Up in the Gray Mountains? That so! I s"pose you been on trails like this before?"
"Nothin" to talk about."
There might have been a double meaning in this remark, and Harry looked twice to make sure that there was no guile.
"Well, here we are." He threw open a door which revealed a bald-headed clerk seated at a desk in a little bare room. "Billy, here"s a gent that cracked it the first whack and started his gun from the leather, by G.o.d.
He--"
"Jest kindly close the door, Harry," said Billy. "Step in, partner.
Gimme your name?"
The door closed on the discomfited Harry, and "Joe c.u.mber" stood close to it, apparently driven to shrinking into the wall in his embarra.s.sment, but while he stood there his hand fumbled behind him and turned the key in the lock, and then extracted it.
"My name"s Joe c.u.mber."
"Joe c.u.mber,"--this while inscribing it.
"Age?"
"About thirty-two, maybe."
"Don"t you know?"
"I don"t exactly."
His eyes were as vague as his words, gentle, and smiling.
"Thirty-two?" said Billy sharply. "You look more like twenty-five to me.
S"pose we split the difference, eh?"
And with a grin he wrote: "Age twenty-two or three."
"Business?"
"Trapper."
"Good! The sheriff is pretty keen for "em. You gents in that game got a sort of nose for the trail, mostly. All right, c.u.mber, you"ll see Gla.s.s."
He stood at the door.
"By the way, c.u.mber, is that straight about startin" your shot with your gun in the holster?"
"I s"pose it is."
"You s"pose?" grunted the clerk. "Well, come on in."
He banged once on the door and then threw it open. "Joe c.u.mber, Pete.
And he drilled the ball startin" his gun out of the leather. Here"s his card."
He closed the door, and once more the stranger stood almost cringing against it, and once more his fingers deftly turned the key--softly, silently--and extracted it from the lock.
The sheriff had not looked up from the study of the card, for reading was more difficult to him than man-killing, and Joe c.u.mber had an opportunity to examine the room. It was hung with a score of pictures.
Some large, some small, but most of them enlargements, it was apparent of kodak snapshots, for the eyes had that bleary look which comes in photographs spread over ten times their intended s.p.a.ce. The faces had little more than bleary eyes in common, for there were bearded men, and smooth-shaven faces, and lean and fat men; there were round, cherubic countenances, and lean, hungry heads; there were squared, protruding chins, and there were chins which sloped away awkwardly toward the neck; in fact it seemed that the sheriff had collected twenty specimens to represent every phase of weakness and strength in the human physiognomy.
But beneath the pictures, almost without exception, there hung weapons: rifles, revolvers, knives, placed criss-cross in a decorative manner, and it came to "Joe c.u.mber" that he was looking at the galaxy of the dead who had fallen by the hand of Sheriff Pete Gla.s.s. Not a face meant anything to him but he knew, instinctively, that they were the chosen bad men of the past twenty years.