with a skinned deck. Two of them were wall-eyed strangers whom
Dingwell guessed to be professional tinhorns. Another ran a curio
store in town. The fourth was Dan Meldrum, one of the toughest crooks
in the county. Nineteen years ago Sheriff Beaudry had sent him to the
penitentiary for rustling calves. The fifth player sat next to the
wall. He was a large, broad-shouldered man close to fifty. His face
had the weather-beaten look of confidence that comes to an outdoor
Westerner used to leading others.

While Dave was moving past this table, he noticed that Chet Fox was
whispering in the ear of the man next the wall. The poker-player
nodded, and at the same moment his glance met that of Dingwell. The
gray eyes of the big fellow narrowed and grew chill. Fox, starting to
move away, recognized the cattleman from whom he had escaped half an
hour before. Taken by surprise, the little spy looked guilty as an
urchin caught stealing apples.

It took no clairvoyant to divine what the subject of that whispered
colloquy had been. The cheerful grin of Dave included impartially Fox,
Meldrum, and the player beneath the elk's head.

The ex-convict spoke first. "Come back to sit in our game, Dave?" he
jeered.

Dingwell understood that this was a challenge. It was impossible to
look on the ugly, lupine face of the man, marked by the ravages of
forty years of vice and unbridled passion, without knowing that he was
ready for trouble now. But Meldrum was a mere detail of a situation
piquant enough even for so light-hearted a son of the Rockies as this
cattleman. Dave had already invited himself into a far bigger game of