The little procession moved uptown.  A hundred yards behind it came young Rutherford and Charlton as a rear guard.  When the contents of the sack had been put in a vault for safe-keeping, Elder invited the party into the Last Chance.  Dave and Roy ordered buttermilk.

Dingwell gave his partner a nudge.  “See who is here.”

The young man nodded gloomily.  He had recognized already the two men drinking at a table in the rear.

“Meldrum and Hart make a sweet pair to draw to when they’re tanking up.  They’re about the two worst bad men in this part of the country.  My advice is to take the other side of the street when you see them coming,” Ryan contributed.

The rustlers glowered at Elder’s party, but offered no comment other than some sneering laughter and ribald whispering.  Yet Beaudry breathed freer when he was out in the open again lengthening the distance between him and them at every stride.

Ryan walked as far as the hotel with Dave and his partner.

“Come in and have dinner with us, Pat,” invited the cattleman.

The Irishman shook his head.  “Can’t, Dave.  Got to go round to the Elephant Corral and look at my horse.  A nail wint into its foot last night.”

After they had dined, Dingwell looked at his watch.  “I want you to look over the ranch today, son.  We’ll ride out and I’ll show you the place.  But first I’ve got to register a kick with the station agent about the charges for freight on a wagon I had shipped in from Denver.  Will you stop at Salmon’s and order this bill of groceries sent up to the corral?  I’ll meet you here at 2.30.”

Roy walked up Mission Street as far as Salmon’s New York Grocery and turned in the order his friend had given him.  After he had seen it filled, he strolled along the sunny street toward the plaza.  It was one of those warm, somnolent New Mexico days as peaceful as old age.  Burros blinked sleepily on three legs and a hoof-tip.  Cowponies switched their tails indolently to brush away flies.  An occasional half-garbed Mexican lounged against a door jamb or squatted in the shade of a wall.  A squaw from the reservation crouched on the curb beside her display of pottery.  Not a sound disturbed the siesta of Battle Butte.

Into this peace broke an irruption of riot.  A group of men poured through the swinging doors of a saloon into the open arcade in front.  Their noisy disputation shattered the sunny stillness like a fusillade in the desert.  Plainly they were much the worse for liquor.

Roy felt again the familiar clutch at his throat, the ice drench at his heart, and the faint slackness of his leg muscles.  For in the crowd just vomited from the Silver Dollar were Meldrum, Fox, Hart, Charlton, and Ned Rutherford.

Charlton it was that caught sight of the passing man.  With an exultant whoop he leaped out, seized Beaudry, and swung him into the circle of hillmen.