Page:Weird Tales v01n04 (1923-06).djvu/33

A Powerful Novel of Sinister Madmen That
Mounts To An Astounding Climax

ALL THE WAY Westward in the smoker the man in the high-crowned, black Stetson had taken no part in the conversation. He had appeared to doze, slumping in the high-backed seat as the train rushed onward into the golden afternoon.

The three men at his back had been busy with an interminable round of poker: draw, jack-pot, and stud; deuces wild, and seven-card peak. They moved across the aisle now, as the long train slowed for the brief stop at Two-Horse Canyon, facing him obliquely and a little to his left.

Twice or thrice they had essayed to draw him into the talk, but the man in the black Stetson had been oblivious; he had continued taciturn—morose, almost, one might have said. But he had not been asleep; rather, he had listened with all his ears as their voices had reached him between hands:

". . . . Yes—Dry Bone—been there myself—they run things pretty much to suit themselves . . . Wide-open . . . Sure . . . You might call it a dead