Dave Roush ordered another drink on the strength of the Texan’s admiration.  “Mind, I don’t say Ranse wasn’t a good man.  Mebbe I’m a leetle mite better ’n him with a hogleg.  Mebbe—­”

“Ranse was good with a revolver all right, but sho! you make him look like a plugged nickel when you go to makin’ smoke, Dave,” interrupted the toady.

“Well, mebbe I do.  Say I do.  I ain’t yet met up with a man can beat me when I’m right.  But at that Ranse was a mighty good man.  They bushwhacked him, I’ll bet a stack of blues.  I aim to git busy soon as I find out who done it.”

The red-headed man raised his voice a trifle.  “Say, you kid—­there at the table—­come here an’ hold these ropes!  See you don’t let the hawses at the other end of ’em git away!”

Slowly the boy turned, pushing his chair round so that he half-faced the group before the bar.  He neither rose nor answered.

“Cayn’t you-all hear?” demanded the man with the shock of unkempt, red hair.

“I hear, but I’m not comin’ right away.  When I do, you’ll wish I hadn’t.”

If a bomb had exploded at his feet Hugh Roush could not have been more surprised.  He was a big, rough man, muscular and sinewy, and he had been the victor of many a rough-and-tumble fight.  On account of his reputation for quarrelsomeness men chose their words carefully when they spoke to him.  That this little fellow with the smooth, girlish face and the small, almost womanish hands and feet should defy him was hard to believe.

“Come a-runnin’, kid, or I’ll whale the life out of you!” he roared.

“You didn’t get me right,” answered the boy in a low, clear voice.  “I’m not comin’ till I get ready, Hugh Roush.”

The wolf snap of the boy’s jaw, the cold glitter in his eyes, might have warned Roush and perhaps did.  He wondered, too, how this stranger knew his name so well.

“Where are you from?” he demanded.

“From anywhere but here,”

“Meanin’ that you’re here to stay?”

“Meanin’ that I’m here to stay.”

“Even if I tell you to git out of the country?”

“You won’t be alive to tell me unless you talk right sudden.”

They watched each other, the man and the boy.  Neither as yet made any motion to draw his gun, the younger one because he was not ready, Roush because he did not want to show any premature alarm before the men taking in the scene.  Nor could he yet convince himself, in spite of the challenge that rang in the words of the boy, of serious danger from so unlikely a source.

Dave Roush had been watching the boy closely.  A likeness to someone whom he could not place stirred faintly his memory.

“Who are you?  What’s yore name?” he snapped out.

The boy had risen from the chair.  His hand rested on his hip as if casually.  But Dave had observed the sureness of his motions and he accepted nothing as of chance.  The experience of Roush was that a gunman lives longer if he is cautious.  His fingers closed on the butt of the revolver at his side.