the sunlight-flooded room, and, as one after another of the men glanced up
from the table, they saw standing in the doorway a man of such malignant
aspect that his look fell across the company like a menace. The swing of
their banter slowed suddenly; it was as if the cold of a new-turned grave
had struck across the June sunshine checking their roughshod fun. None of
them had the hardihood to joke with a man that stood in the shadow of
death; and hate and murder looked from the eyes of the man in the doorway
and looked towards Simpson. One by one they perceived the man of the
shadow, all but Simpson, eating steak drowned in Worcestershire.

The man in the doorway was tall and lean, and the prison blench upon his
face was in unpleasant contrast to the ruddy tan of the faces about the
table. His sombrero was tipped back and the hair hung dank about the pale,
sweating forehead, suggestive of sickness. But weak health did not imply
weak purpose; every feature in that hawk-like face was sharp with hatred,
and in the narrowing eye was vengeance that is sweet.

He stood still; there was in his hatred a something hypnotic that grew
imperceptibly and imperceptibly communicated itself to the men at table.
He gloated over the eating fat man as if he had dwelt much in imagination
on the sight and was in no hurry to curtail his joy at the reality. The
men began to get restless, shuffle their feet, moisten their lips; only
the college boy spoke, and then from a wealth of ignorance, knowing
nothing of the rugged, give-and-take justice of the plains—an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth, and the law and the courts go hang while a man’s
got a right arm to pull a trigger. Not one in all that company, even the
cattle-men whose interests were opposed to Rodney’s, but felt the justice
of his errand.

"When did they let him out?" whispered the college boy; and then,