In fact, in the meantime little Duffy had passed on to the next man, in a side mutter, the significant phrase:  “He knows!” It went from lip to lip like a watchword passing along a line of sentinels.  Each man heard it imperturbably, completed the sentence he was speaking before, or maintained his original silence through a pause, and then repeated it to his right-hand neighbour.  Their demeanour did not alter perceptibly, except that the laughter, perhaps, became a little more uproarious, and they were sitting straighter in their chairs, their eyes brighter.

All they knew was that Drew had impressed on them that Bard must not leave that room in command of his six-shooter or even of his hands.  He must be bound securely.  The working out of the details of execution he had left to their own ingenuity.  It might have seemed a little thing to do to greener fellows, but every one of these men was an experienced cowpuncher, and like all old hands on the range they were perfectly familiar with the amount of damage which a single armed man can do.

The thing could be done, of course, but the point was to do it with the minimum of danger.  So they waited, and talked, and ate and always from the corners of their eyes were conscious of the slightly built, inoffensive man who sat beside Lawlor near the head of the table.  In appearance he was surely most innocuous, but Nash had spoken, and in such matters they were all willing to take his word with a childlike faith.

So the meal went on, and the only sign, to the most experienced eye, was that the chairs were placed a little far back from the edge of the table, a most necessary condition when men may have to rise rapidly or get at their holsters for a quick draw.

Calamity Ben bearing a mighty dish of bread pudding, passed directly behind the chair of the stranger.  The whole table watched with a sudden keenness, and they saw Bard turn, ever so slightly, just as Calamity passed behind the chair.

“I say,” he said, “may I have a bit of hot water to put in this coffee?”

“Sure,” said Calamity, and went on, but the whole table knew that the stranger was on his guard.

The mutual suspicion gave a tenseness to the atmosphere, as if it were charged with the electricity of a coming storm, a tingling waiting which made the men prone to become silent and then talk again in fitful outbursts.  Or it might be said that it was like a glass full of precipitate which only waits for the injection of a single unusual substance before it settles to the bottom and leaves the remaining liquid clear.  It was for the unusual, then, that the entire assembly waited, feeling momentarily that it must be coming, for the strain could not endure.

As for Bard, he stuck by his original apparent indifference.  For he still felt sure that the real William Drew was behind this elaborate deception and the thing for which he waited was some revelation of the hand of the master.  The trumps which he felt he held was in being forewarned; he could not see that the others knew his hand.