These men were followed by a younger man riding with a very young woman. De Spain knew none of the front-rank men, but he knew well Nan Morgan and her dancing partner.
They were talking together, and Nan seemed from her manner at odds with her companion. He appeared to be trying to laugh the situation off when he caught sight of de Spain pausing for them to pass. Gales face lighted as he set eyes on him, and he
spoke quickly to Nan. De Spain could not at first hear his words, but he needed no ears to interpret his laugh and the expression on his face. Nan, persistently importuned, looked around. She saw de Spain, much closer, it would seem, than she had expected to see a man looking directly at her, and her eyes rested on him only a moment. The substance of her cousins words she apparently had not caught, and he repeated them in a louder voice: Theres your handsome Medicine Bend gunman!
Nan, glancing again toward de Spain, seemed aware that he heard. She looked away. De Spain tightened up with a rage. The blood rushed to his face, the sarcasm struck in. If the birthmark could have deepened with humiliation it would have done so at the instant of the cold inspection of the girls pretty eyes. But he cared less for Nans inspection, cold as it was, than for the jibe of her satisfied cousin. Not content, Gale, calling ahead to the others, invited their attention to the man on the street corner. De Spain felt minded to hurl an insult at them in a body. It would have been four to onerather awkward odds even if they were mountedand there was a woman. But he only stood still, returning their inspection as insolently as silence could. Each face was faithfully photographed and filed in his memory, and his steady gaze followed them until they rode down the hill and clattered jauntily out on the swaying suspension bridge that still crosses the Rat River at Grant Street, and connects the whole south countrythe Spanish Sinks, the Thief River gold-fields, the saw-toothed Superstition Range, Morgans Gap, and Music Mountain with Sleepy Cat and the railroad.
De Spain, walking down Grant Street, watched the party disappear among the hills across the river. The encounter had stirred him. He already hated the Morgans, at least all except the blue-eyed girl, and she, it was not difficult to divine from her expression, was, at least, disdainful of her morning rival.
Reaching the station platform while still busy with his thoughts, de Spain encountered Jeffries and Lefever.
When are you coming up to take my job, Henry? demanded the superintendent without any parley.
I am not coming up, announced de Spain bluntly.
Not coming up, eh? All right, well find somebody that will come up, retorted Jeffries. John, he added, wire Medicine Bend to send Farrell Kennedy here in the morning to see me.
Whats the reason that fellow sticks so close to Medicine Bend? demanded Jeffries, when Lefever joined him later in his office.
Dont ask me, frowned Lefever perplexed. Dont ask me. Henry is odd in some ways. You cant tell whats going on inside that fellows head by looking at the outside of it. Jeffries grunted coldly at this bit of wisdom. Ill tell you what I should thinkif I had to think: Henry de Spain has never found out rightly who was responsible for the death of his father. He expects to do it, sometime; and he thinks sometime hes going to find out right there in Medicine Bend.
While they were talking the train was pulling out for Medicine Bend with de Spain on board.
It was a tedious ride, and de Spain was much too engaged with his thoughts to sleep. The Morgans were in his head, and he could not be rid of them. He recalled having been told that long ago some of these same Morgans lived on the Peace River above his fathers ranch. Every story he had ever heard of their wild lives, for they were men sudden in quarrel and reckless of sequel, came back to his mind. He wondered what sort of a young girl this could be who lived among themwho could live among themand be what she seemed at a glance to bea fawn among mountain-wolves.
It was late when he reached Medicine Bend, and raininga dismal kind of a night. Instead of going to his room, just across the street from the station, he went up-stairs and sat down with the train-despatchers. After an hour of indecision, marked by alternative fits of making up and unmaking his mind, he went, instead of going to bed, into the telegraph-room, where black-haired Dick Grady sat at a key.
How about the fight to-night at Sleepy Cat? Grady asked at once.
What fight? demanded de Spain perfunctorily.
The Calabasas gang got to going again up there to-night. They say one of the Morgans was in it. Some town, that Sleepy Cat, eh, Henry?
What Morgan was in it?
Gale Morgan. A lot of stuff came in on it an hour ago. Was there anything started when you left?
I didnt hear of anything, responded de Spain. But his indifference to the subject was marked.
Whats the matter? demanded the operator. Arent you well to-night?