Six Feet Four | Page 7

The girl
studied him curiously, marking each trifling detail of his costume: the
shaggy black chaps like those of a cowboy off for a gay holiday; the
soft grey shirt and silk handkerchief to match knotted loosely about a
brown throat. He was very tall and wore boots with tall heels; his black
hat had a crown which added to the impression of great height. To the

fascinated eyes of the girl he appeared little less than a giant.
He stopped and for a moment remained tensely, watchfully still. She
felt his eyes on her; she could not see them in the shadow of his hat, but
had an unpleasant sensation of a pair of sinister eyes narrowing in their
keen regard of her. She shivered as though cold.
Moving again he made his away along the wall and to the bar. He
stepped behind it, still with neither hesitation nor haste, and found the
two mail bags with his feet. And with his feet he pushed them out to the
open, along the wall, toward the door. Hap Smith snarled; his face no
longer one of broad good humour. The shotgun barrel bore upon him
steadily, warningly. Hap's rising hand dropped again.
Then suddenly all was uproar and confusion, those who had been
chained to their chairs or places on the floor springing into action. The
man had backed to the door, swept up the mail bags and now suddenly
leaped backward into the outside night. Hap Smith and four or five
other men had drawn their guns and were firing after him. There were
outcries, above them surging the curses of the stage driver. Bert Stone
was moaning on the floor. The girl wanted to go to him but for a little
merely regarded him with wide eyes; there was a spreading pool on the
bare floor at his side, looking in the uncertain light like spilled ink. A
thud of bare feet, and Ma Drury came running into the room, her night
dress flying after her.
"Pa!" she cried wildly. "You ain't killed, are you, Pa?"
"Bert is, most likely," he answered, swinging across the room to the
fallen man. Then it was that the girl by the fire sprang to her feet and
ran to Bert Stone's side.
"Who was it? What happened?" Ma Drury asked shrilly.
The men looked from one to another of their set-faced crowd. Getting
only silence for her answer Ma Drury with characteristic irritation
demanded again to be told full particulars and in the same breath
ordered the door shut. A tardy squeal and another like an echo came

from the room which harboured Lew Yates's wife and mother-in-law.
Perhaps they had just come out from under the covers for air and
squealed and dived back again ... not being used to the customs
obtaining in the vicinity of Drury's road house as Poke himself had
remarked.
Hap Smith was the first one of the men who had dashed outside to
return. He carried a mail bag in each hand, muddy and wet, having
stumbled over them in the wild chase. He dropped them to the floor and
stared angrily at them.
The bulky mail bag, save for the damp and mud, was untouched. The
lean bag however had been slit open. Hap Smith kicked it in a sudden
access of rage.
"There was ten thousan' dollars in there, in green backs," he said
heavily. "They trusted it to me an' Bert Stone to get across with it. An'
now ..."
His face was puckered with rage and shame. He went slowly to where
Bert Stone lay. His friend was white and unconscious ... perhaps
already his tale was told. Hap Smith looked from him to the girl who,
her face as white as Bert's, was trying to staunch the flow of blood.
"I said it," he muttered lugubriously; "the devil's own night."


CHAPTER III
BUCK THORNTON, MAN'S MAN
Those who had rushed into the outer darkness in the wake of the
highwayman returned presently. Mere impulse and swift natural
reaction from their former enforced inactivity rather than any hope of
success had sent them hot-foot on the pursuit. The noisy, windy night,
the absolute dark, obviated all possibility of coming up with him.

Grumbling and theorising, they returned to the room and closed the
door behind them.
Now that the tense moment of the actual robbery had passed there was
a general buzzing talk, voices lifted in surmise, a lively excitement
replacing the cosy quiet of a few moments ago. Voices from the spare
bed room urged Ma Drury to bring an account of the adventure, and
Poke's wife, having first escorted the wounded man to her own bed and
donned a wrapper and shoes and stockings, gave to Lew Yates's