“Yes.”

“Where’s Galloway now?”

It was noteworthy that he asked for Jim Galloway rather than for Kid Rickard.

“In there,” they told him, indicating a second card-room adjoining that in which the Las Palmas sheepman lay.  Rod Norton, again glancing sharply across the faces confronting him, went to the closed door and set his hand to the knob.  But Jim Galloway, having desired privacy just now, had locked the door.  Norton struck it sharply, commanding: 

“Open up, Galloway.  It’s Norton.”

There came the low mutter of a voice hasty and with the quality of stern exhortation, the snap of the lock, and the door was jerked open.  Norton’s eyes, probing into every square foot of the chamber, took stock of Jim Galloway, and beyond him of Kid Rickard, slouching forward in a chair and rolling a cigarette.

“Hello, Norton,” said Galloway tonelessly.  “Glad you showed up.  There’s been trouble.”

A heavy man above the waist-line, thick-shouldered, with large head and bull throat, his muscular torso tapered down to clean-lined hips, his legs of no greater girth than those of the lean-bodied man confronting him, his feet small in glove-fitting boots.  His eyes, prominent and full and a clear brown, were a shade too innocent.  Chin, jaw, and mouth, the latter full-lipped, were those of strength, smashing power, and a natural cruelty.  He was the one man to be found in San Juan who was dressed as the rather fastidiously inclined business men dress in the cities.

“Another man down, Galloway,” said Norton with an ominous sternness.  “And in your place. . .  How long do you think that you can keep out from under?”

His meaning was plain enough; the men behind him in the barroom listened in attitudes which, varying in other matters, were alike in their tenseness.  Galloway, however, staring stonily with eyes not unlike polished agate, so cold and steady were they, gave no sign of taking offense.

“You and I never were friends, Rod Norton,” he said, unmoved.  “Still that’s no reason you should jump me for trouble.  Answering your question, I expect to keep out from under just as long as two things remain as they are:  first, as long as I play the game square and in the open, next, as long as an overgrown boy holds down the job of sheriff in San Juan.”

In Norton’s eyes was blazing hatred, in Galloway’s mere steady, unwinking boldness.

“You saw the killing?” the sheriff asked curtly.

“Yes,” said Galloway.

“The Kid there did it?”