After dinner Loudon inquired of the bartender whether it was Archer's custom to eat at the hotel.
"First time he ever ate here to my knowledge," said the bartender. "He's got a home an' a Injun woman to cook."
"It's the little tumble-weeds show how the wind blows," thought Loudon to himself, and sat down in a corner of the barroom and pondered deeply.
A few minutes later he removed his cartridge-belt, hung it on the back of his chair, and composed himself ostensibly to doze. His three-quarter shut eyes, however, missed nothing that went on in the barroom.
Archer and his lanky friend entered and draped themselves over the bar. Loudon, after a brief space of time, arose, stretched, and yawningly stumbled upstairs. He lay down on his cot and smoked one cigarette after another, his eyes on the ceiling.
Laguerre wandered in, and Loudon uttered cogent sentences in a whisper. Laguerre grinned delightedly. His perverted sense of humour was aroused. Loudon did not smile. What he believed to be impending gave him no pleasure.
"Guess I'll go down," announced Loudon, when an hour had elapsed. "No sense in delayin' too long."
"Seems to me I took it off in here," Loudon flung back over his shoulder, as though in response to a question. "Shore, there it is."
He walked across the barroom to where his cartridge-belt and six-shooter hung on the back of a chair. He buckled on the belt, Archer and his lanky friend watching him the while.
"How about a little game, gents?" suggested Archer.
In a flash Loudon saw again the barroom of the Happy Heart and the Sheriff of Sunset County surrounded by Block's friends. The wolf-faced man had employed almost those very words. Loudon smiled cheerfully.
"Why, shore," he said, "I'm with yuh. I left my coin upstairs. I'll be right down."
He hurried up to his room, closed the door, and set his back against it. Drawing his six-shooter he flipped out the cylinder. No circle of brass heads and copper primers met his eye. His weapon had been unloaded.
"Fell plumb into it," he muttered without exultation. "The ---- murderers!"
He tried the action. Nothing wrong there. Only the cartridges had been juggled. He reloaded hastily from a fresh box of cartridges. He would not trust those in his belt. Heaven only knew how far ahead the gentleman who tampered with his gun had looked.