In the meantime the proprietor returned to his desk to find a long, gaunt man leaning above the register, one brown finger tracing a name.

“Looking for somebody, Sandersen?” he asked.  “Know this gent Sinclair?”

“Face looked kind of familiar to me,” said the other, who had jerked his head up from the study of the register.  “Somehow I don’t tie that name up with the face.”

“Maybe not,” said the proprietor.  “Maybe he ain’t Riley Sinclair of Colma; maybe he’s somebody else.”

“Traveling strange, you mean?” asked Sandersen.

“I dunno, Bill, but he looks like a hard one.  He’s got one of them nervous right hands.”

“Gunfighter?”

“I dunno.  I’m not saying anything about what he is or what he ain’t.  But, if a gent was to come in here and tell me a pretty strong yarn about Riley Sinclair, or whatever his name might be, I wouldn’t incline to doubt of it, would you, Bill?”

“Maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn’t,” answered Bill Sandersen gloomily.

He went out onto the veranda and squinted thoughtfully into the darkness.  Bill Sandersen was worried—­very worried.  The moment he saw Sinclair enter the hotel, there had been a ghostly familiarity about the man.  And he understood the reason for it as soon as he saw the name on the register.  Sinclair!  The name carried him back to the picture of the man who lay on his back, with the soft sands already half burying his body, and the round, purple blur in the center of his forehead.  In a way it was as if Hal Sinclair had come back to Me in a new and more terrible form, come back as an avenger.

Bill Sandersen was not an evil man, and his sin against Hal Sinclair had its qualifying circumstances.  At least he had been only one of three, all of whom had concurred in the thing.  He devoutly wished that the thing were to be done over again.  He swore to himself that in such a case he would stick with his companion, no matter who deserted.  But what had brought this Riley Sinclair all the way from Colma to Sour Creek, if it were not an errand of vengeance?

A sense of guilt troubled the mind of Bill Sandersen, but the obvious thing was to find out the reason for Sinclair’s presence in Sour Creek.  Sandersen crossed the street to the newly installed telegraph office.  He had one intimate friend in the far-off town of Colma, and to that friend he now addressed a telegram.

* * * * *

Rush back all news you have about man calling self Riley Sinclair of Colma—­over six feet tall, weight hundred and eighty, complexion dark, hard look.

* * * * *

There was enough meat in that telegram to make the operator rise his head and glance with sharpened eyes at the patron.  Bill Sandersen returned that glance with so much interest that the operator lowered his head again and made a mental oath that he would let the Westerners run the West.