“Most generally,” said Riley Sinclair, “when I climb into a saddle it ain’t for pleasure—­it’s to get somewhere.”

His voice was surprisingly pleasant.  He spoke very deliberately, so that one felt occasionally that he was pausing to find the right words.  And, in addition to the quality of that deep voice, he had an impersonal way of looking his interlocutor squarely in the eye, a habit that pleased the men of the mountain desert.  On this occasion his companion responded at once with a grin.  He was a younger man than Riley Sinclair, but he gave an impression of as much hardness as Riley himself.

“Maybe you’ll be sliding out of the saddle for a minute?” he asked.  “Got some pretty fair hooch in the house.”

“Thanks, partner, but I’m due over to Sour Creek by night.  I guess that’s Sour Creek over the hill?”

“Yep.  New to these parts?”

“Sort of new.”

Riley’s noncommittal attitude was by no means displeasing to the larger man.  His rather brutally handsome face continued to light, as if he were recognizing in Riley Sinclair a man of his own caliber.

“You’re from yonder?”

“Across the mountains.”

“You travel light.”

His eyes were running over Riley’s meager equipment.  Sinclair had been known to strike across the desert loaded with nothing more than a rifle, ammunition, and water.  Other things were nonessentials to him, and it was hardly likely that he would put much extra weight on a horse.  The only concession to animal comfort, in fact, was the slicker rolled snugly behind the saddle.  He was one of those rare Westerners to whom coffee on the trail is not the staff of life.  As long as he had a gun he could get meat, and as long as he could get meat, he cared little about other niceties of diet.  On a long trip his “extras” were usually confined to a couple of bags of strength-giving grain for his horse.

“Maybe you’d know the gent I’m down here looking for?” asked Riley.  “Happen to know Ollie Quade—­Oliver Quade?”

“Sort of know him, yep.”

Riley went on explaining blandly “You see, I’m carrying him a sort of a death message.”

“H’m,” said the big man, and he watched Riley, his eyes grown suddenly alert, his glance shifting from hand to face with catlike uncertainty.

“Yep,” resumed Sinclair in a rambling vein.  “I come from a gent that used to be a pal of his.  Name is Sam Lowrie.”

“Sam Lowrie!” exclaimed the other.  “You a friend of Sam’s?”

“I was the only gent with him when he died,” said Sinclair simply.

“Dead!” said the other heavily.  “Sam dead!”

“You must of been pretty thick with him,” declared Riley.

“Man, I’m Quade.  Lowrie was my bunkie!”

He came close to Sinclair, raising an eager face.  “How’d Lowrie go out?”

“Pretty peaceful—­boots off—­everything comfortable.”

“He give you a message for me?”