Part 3 (1/2)

The only building worth consideration is the hotel, opposite the depot

This has a verandah and a tie-post, and there are always horses standing outside it, and always , then they are to be found inside

It was only a little after eight in the e by the number of saddle-horses at the tie-post, the people of Beacon Crossing were very an to fill with hard-faced, rough-cladtheir pipes, which suggested that they had just eaten

Nevil Steyne was one of the earliest to eo in, and the ht blue distance away in the direction of the Indian Reservations, and, unseen by those who stood around, he shtly at what he beheld The twoearnestly, and their earnestness was e their pipes alight

”The arguular man who ran a small hardware store a few yards lower down the street ”But they ain't on this side of the Reservation anyway”

The significant selfishness of his last reht the other round on him in a moly ”Say I' for the 'diamond P's,' and they run their stock that aways Hev you been through one o' thes?”

The other shook his head

”Jest so”

Another man, stout and florid, Jack McCabe, the butcher, joined them

”Can't make it out There ain't been any Sun-dance, which is usual 'fore they get busy Guess it ain't no rising Big Wolf's too clever If it was spring round-up or fall round-up it 'ud seem more likely Guess some feller's been and fired the woods Which, by the way, is around Jason's farht that Jason's got a couple of hundred beeves in his corrals?”

”Yes,” replied Dan of the ”dia S'

stock He's holding 'em up for rebrandin' Say, Nevil,” the cowpuncher went on, turning to the wood-cutter of White River, ”you oughter kno the?”

Nevil turned with a slight flush tingeing his cheeks He didn't like the other's tone

”I don't knohy I should know or see anything,” he said shortly

”Wal, you're kind o' livin' ad-jacent, as the sayin' is,” observed Dan, with a shadowy smile

The other men on the verandah had come around, and they smiled more broadly than the cowpuncher It was easy to see that they were not particularly favorable toward Nevil Steyne It was as Dan had said; he lived near the Reservation, and, well, these men were frontiersmen who knew the ways of the country in which they lived

Nevil saw the shed instead

”Well,” he said, ”since you set such store by my opinions I confess I had no reason to suspect any disturbance, and, to illustratehome at noon, and to-morrow intend to cut a load or two of wood on the river”

Dan had nobut refrained, and the rest of the men turned to watch the white smoke in the distance

Decidedly Steyne had scored a point and should have been content; but he wasn't

”I suppose you fellows think a whitethe blanket,'” he pursued with a sneer

There was a brief silence Then Dan answered hiuess”

There was a nasty tone in the cowpuncher's voice and trouble seemed imminent, but it was fortunately nipped in the bud by Jack McCabe