The Gringos | Page 8

with him
when Bill happened to be in that particular mood, which, to tell the
truth, was not often. But in five minutes or less he had forgotten the
snub. His head popped in again.
"Bill!"
There may be much meaning in a tone, though it utters but one
unmeaning word. Bill dropped a handful of nails upon a table and came
striding down the long room to the door; pushed Jim unceremoniously
aside and stood upon the step. He was just in time to look into the

rageful, blue eyes of Jack Allen, walking with a very straight back and
a contemptuous smile on his lips, between the Captain and one of his
trusted lieutenants.
Bill's fingers clenched suggestively upon the handle of the hammer. His
jaw slackened and then pushed itself forward to a fighting angle while
he stared, and he named in his amazement that place which the padres
had taught the Indians to fear.
The Captain heard him and grinned sourly as he passed on. Jack heard
him, and his smile grew twisted at the tone in which the word was
uttered; but he still smiled, which was more than many a man would
have done in his place.
Bill stood while the rest of that grim procession passed his place. There
was another, a young fellow who looked ready to cry, walking
unsteadily behind Jack, both his arms gripped by others of the
Vigilance Committee. There were two crude stretchers, borne by
stolid-faced miners in red flannel shirts and clay-stained boots. On the
first a dead man lay grinning up at the sun, his teeth just showing under
his bushy mustache, a trickle of red running down from his temple. On
the next a man groaned and mumbled blasphemy between his
groanings.
Bill took it all in, a single glance for each,--a glance trained by
gambling to see a great deal between the flicker of his lashes. He did
not seem to look once at the Captain, yet he knew that Jack's
ivory-handled pistols hung at the Captain's rocking hips as he went
striding past; and he knew that malice lurked under the grizzled hair
which hid the Captain's cruel lips; and that satisfaction glowed in the
hard, sidelong glance he gave his prisoner.
He stood until he saw Jack duck his head under the tent flaps of the jail
and the white-faced youth follow shrinking after. He stood while the
armed guards took up their stations on the four sides of the tent and
began pacing up and down the paths worn deep in tragic significance.
He saw the wounded man carried into Pete's place across the way, and
the dead man taken farther down the street. He saw the crowd split into

uneasy groups which spoke a common tongue, that they might
exchange unasked opinions upon this, the biggest sensation since
Sandy left town with his ankles tied under the vicious-eyed buckskin
whose riders rode always toward the west and whose saddle was
always empty when he came back to his stall at the end of the town.
Bill saw it all, to the last detail; but after his one explosive oath, he was
apparently the most indifferent of them all.
When the Captain ended his curt instructions to the guard and came
towards him, Bill showed a disposition to speak.
"Who's the kid?" he drawled companionably, while his fingers itched
upon the hammer, and the soul of him lusted for sight of the hole it
could make in the skull of the Captain. "I don't recollect seeing him
around town--and there ain't many faces I forget, either."
The Captain shot him a surprised look that was an unconscious tribute
to Bill's diplomatic art. But Bill's level glance would have disarmed a
keener man than Tom Perkins.
Perkins stopped. "Stranger, from what he said--though I've got my
doubts. Some crony of Allen's, I expect. It was him done the shooting;
the kid didn't have any gun on him. Allen didn't deny it, either."
"No--he's just bull-headed enough to tough it out," commented Bill.
"What was the row about--do yuh know?"
Perkins stiffened. "That," he said with some dignity, "will come out at
the trial. He killed Rawhide outright, and Texas Bill will die, I reckon.
The trial will show what kinda excuse he thought he had." Having
delivered himself, thus impartially and with malice towards none,
Perkins started on.
"Oh, say! You don't mind if I talk to 'em?" Bill gritted his teeth at
having to put the sentence in that favor-seeking tone, but he did it,
nevertheless.
The Captain scowled under his black, slouch hat. "I've give strict orders

not to let anybody inside the tent till after the trial," he said shortly.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll talk to 'em through the door," Bill