“That’s Maison—­Tom Maison, Okar’s banker.  They tell me he’d skin his grandmother if he thought he could make a dollar out of the deal.”  Owen grinned.  “He’s the man you’re figuring to borrow money from—­to build your dam.”

“I’ll talk with him tomorrow,” said Sanderson.

In their room Sanderson removed some of the stains of travel.  Then, telling Owen he would see him at dusk, he went out into the street.

Okar was buzzing with life and humming with activity when Sanderson started down the board walk.  In Okar was typified the spirit of the West that was to be—­the intense hustle and movement that were to make the town as large and as powerful as many of its sister cities.

Threading his way through the crowd on the board walk, Sanderson collided with a man.  He grinned, not looking at the other, apologized, and was proceeding on his way, when he chanced to look toward the doorway of the building he was passing.

Alva Dale was standing just inside the doorway, watching him, and as Sanderson’s gaze met his Dale grinned sneeringly.

Sanderson’s lips twitched with contempt.  His own smile matched Dale’s in the quality of its hostility.

Sanderson was about to pass on when someone struck him heavily between the shoulders.  He staggered and lurched against the rough board front of the building going almost to his knees.

When he could steady himself he wheeled, his hand at his hip.  Standing near him, grinning maliciously, was the man with whom he had collided.

In the man’s right hand was a pistol.

“Bump into me, will you—­you locoed shorthorn!” sneered the man as Sanderson turned.  He cursed profanely, incoherently.  But he did not shoot.

The weapon in his hand began to sag curiously, the fingers holding it slowly slipping from the stock.  And the man’s face—­thin and seamed—­became chalklike beneath the tan upon it.  His eyes, furtive and wolfish, bulged with astonishment and recognition, and his mouth opened vacuously.

“Deal Sanderson!” he said, weakly.  “Good Lord!  I didn’t git a good look at yon!  I’m in the wrong pew, Deal, an’ I sure don’t want none of your game!”

“Dal Colton,” said Sanderson.  His voice was cold and even as he watched the other sheathe his gun.  “Didn’t know me, eh?  But you was figurin’ on pluggin’ me.”

He walked close to the man and stuck his face close to the other, his lips in a straight line.  He knew Colton to be one of the most conscienceless “killers” in the section of the country near Tombstone.

“Who was you lookin’ for, then?” demanded Sanderson.

“Not you—­that’s a cinch!” grinned the other, fidgeting nervously under Sanderson’s gaze.  He whispered to Sanderson, for in the latter’s eyes he saw signs of a cold resolve to sift the matter to the bottom: 

“Look here, Square; I sure don’t want none of your game.  Things has been goin’ sorta offish for me for a while, an’ so when I meets a guy a while ago who tells me to ‘git’ a guy named Will Bransford—­pointin’ you out to me when your back was turned—­I takes him up.  I wasn’t figurin’——­”