The quick eye of the officer had swept over the place and found the two men he wanted sitting inconspicuously at a small table.
"I'm not here for long, Sam. Two genuwine blown-in-the-bottle bad-men are after my scalp. They're runnin' me outa town. Seen anything of 'em? They belong to the Dinsmore outfit."
The old soldier looked at him with a sudden startled expression. He knew well what men were sitting against the wall a few steps from him. This was talk that might have to be backed by a six-shooter. Bullets were likely to be flying soon.
"You don't look to me like you're hittin' yore heels very fast to make a get-away, Jack," he said dryly.
"I'm sure on the jump. They're no bully-puss kind of men, but sure enough terrors from the chaparral. If I never get out o' town, ship my saddle in a gunny-sack to my brother at Dallas."
"Makin' yore will, are you?" inquired Joe Johnston's former trooper.
The red-haired man grinned. "I got to make arrangements. They came here to get me. Two of 'em--bad-men with blood in their eyes." He hummed, with jaunty insolence: "He's a killer and a hater! He's the great annihilator! He's a terror of the boundless prai-ree.
"That goes double. I'm certainly one anxious citizen. Don't you let 'em hurt me, Sam."
There was a movement at the table where the two men were sitting. One of them had slid from his chair and was moving toward the back door.
The Ranger pretended to catch sight of him for the first time. "Hello, Gurley! What's yore hurry? Got to see another man, have you?"
The rustler did not wait to answer. He vanished through the door and fled down the alley in the direction of the corral. Overstreet could do as he pleased, but he intended to slap a saddle on his horse and make tracks for the cap-rock country.
Overstreet himself was not precisely comfortable in his mind, but he did not intend to let a smooth-faced boy run him out of the gambling-house before a dozen witnesses. If he had to fight, he would fight. But in his heart he cursed Gurley for a yellow-backed braggart. The fellow had got him into this and then turned tail. The man from Colorado wished devoutly that Pete Dinsmore were beside him.
"You're talkin' at me, young fellow. Listen: I ain't lookin' for any trouble with you--none a-tall. But I'm not Steve Gurley. Where I come from, folks grow man-size. Don't lean on me too hard. I'm liable to decrease the census of red-haired guys."
Overstreet rose and glared at him, but at the same time one hand was reaching for his hat.