CHAPTER VIII


THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET

Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain
the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois
and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception
to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made
his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob
Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the
free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held
true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of
soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked
above the knob of the door before him.

"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like a strip
of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the entrance, found it
locked, and in lieu of entering tested the badge of sorrow between thumb
and finger. "Pant stuff, sure enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob
himself, or they'd have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now
what in thunder, I wonder--"

He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house. Like the
general store, the door was closed, and just above the catch, flapping
languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the mate to the black rag
dangling at his back. The spectator's shaggy eyebrows tightened in
genuine surprise, and with near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts