The food inside me and a cigarette burning, I went out into the crooked street again. From the Border Palace came the clicking of pool balls. I followed the sound through the door.
In a large room, four men were leaning over a couple of pool tables, while five or six more watched them from chairs along the wall. On one side of the room was an oak bar, with nobody behind it. Through an open door in the rear came the sound of shuffling cards.
A big man whose paunch was dressed in a white vest, over a shirt in the bosom of which a diamond sparkled, came toward me; his triple-chinned red face expanding into the professionally jovial smile of a confidence man.
“I’m Bardell,” he greeted me, stretching out a fat and shiny-nailed hand on which more diamonds glittered. “This is my joint. I’m glad to know you, sheriff! By God, we need you, and I hope you can spend a lot of your time here. These waddies”—and he chuckled, nodding at the pool players—“cut up rough on me sometimes, and I’m glad there’s going to be somebody around who can handle them.”
I let him pump my hand up and down.
“Let me make you known to the boys,” he went on, turning with one arm across my shoulders. “These are Circle H.A.R. riders”—waving some of his rings at the pool players—“except this Milk River hombre, who, being a peeler, kind of looks down on ordinary hands.”
The Milk River hombre was the slender youth who had sat beside the girl in the Canyon House dining-room. His companions were young—though