“And Templeton called me a fool!” mused the tall cattle man, a look of vast contempt in his stern eyes.

He stood a little behind the other men, looking over their heads.  For only a fleeting second had his glance rested upon the stage at the bank.  Then he looked swiftly at the man in front of him.  It was Blackie, the bartender.  When Blackie turned abruptly Thornton looked squarely into the black eyes, seeing there an unusually beady brightness, something of the hint of a quick frown upon the thin slick line of the eyebrows.

“Driver and guard will both be needing their shooting irons before they see the border, Blackie,” Thornton said quietly.

And then with a short, insolent laugh he returned for the hat he had left hanging upon a nail.  Blackie, making no answer, followed, going behind his bar.  A little dusky red had crept up into his shallow face, his eyes burned hard into Thornton’s as the man from the Poison Hole came by him.

“When you goin’ back to the range, Buck?” he asked sharply.

“I’m going to start as soon as I can roll a smoke and saddle a horse,” Thornton answered him, a little smile in his eyes.  And then, as an after thought, “I follow the stage road for about ten miles before I turn off on the trail.  Wish I could stick with them clean through.”

“What for?” demanded Blackie in the same sharp tone.

“Oh, just to see the fun,” Thornton told him lightly.  “So long, Blackie.”

“You seem to be mighty sure something’s goin’ to be pulled off this trip.”

Thornton hung upon his heel, turning slowly.

“I am, Blackie,” he said carelessly.  And then, “Say, did you notice the two passengers in the stage?”

“No.”  He put a great deal of emphasis into the denial.  “Who was it?”

“I thought you might have noticed.  One of them was that crooked eyed jasper I saw you staking to free drinks the last time I was in town.”

He stared straight into the smaller man’s eyes, saw the colour deepen in his cheeks, shrugged his big shoulders and went to the door.  Several of the men who had come back into the room looked after him curiously, then as though for explanation, into Blackie’s narrowed eyes.  The bartender’s hand dropped swiftly out of sight under his bar.  Thornton’s back was turned square upon him.  And yet, as though he had seen the gesture and it had been full of significance to him, he whirled with a movement even quicker than Blackie’s had been, and standing loosely, his hands at his side, looked coolly into the bright black eyes.  For a moment no man moved.  Then Blackie, with a little sigh which sounded loudly in the quiet room, brought his hand back into sight, letting his fingers tap upon the bar.  Thornton smiled, turned again and stepped quickly out of the door.

“As long as they don’t get any closer to the Poison Hole it’s none of my funeral,” he muttered to himself.  “But if they do, I know one little man who could do a powerful lot of squealing with the proper inducement!”