Outside the door of the commandant's office Arthur Ridley stood for a moment and glanced nervously up and down the dirt road. In a hog-leather belt around his waist was six thousand dollars just turned over to him by Major Ponsford as the last payment for beef steers delivered at the fort according to contract some weeks earlier.
Arthur had decided not to start on the return journey until next morning, but he was not sure his judgment had been good. It was still early afternoon. Before nightfall he might be thirty miles on his way. The trouble with that was that he would then have to spend two nights out, and the long hours of darkness with their flickering shadows cast by the camp-fires would be full of torture for him. On the other hand, if he should stay till morning, word might leak out from the officers' quarters that he was carrying a large sum of money.
A drunken man came weaving down the street. He stopped opposite Ridley and balanced himself with the careful dignity of the inebriate. But the gray eyes, hard as those of a gunman, showed no trace of intoxication. Nor did the steady voice.
"Friend, are you Clint Wadley's messenger?"
The startled face of Ridley flew a flag of confession. "Why--what do you mean?" he stammered. Nobody was to have known that he had come to get the money for the owner of the A T O.
"None of my business, you mean," flung back the man curtly. "Good enough! It ain't. What's more, I don't give a damn. But listen: I was at the Buffalo Hump when two fellows came in. Me, I was most asleep, and they sat in the booth next to me. I didn't hear all they said, but I got this--that they're aimin' to hold up some messenger of Clint Wadley after he leaves town to-morrow. You're the man, I reckon. All right. Look out for yourself. That's all."
"But--what shall I do?" asked Ridley.
"Do? I don't care. I'm tellin' you--see? Do as you please."
"What would you do?" The danger and the responsibility that had fallen upon him out of a sky of sunshine paralyzed the young man's initiative.
The deep-set, flinty eyes narrowed to slits. "What I'd do ain't necessarily what you'd better do. What are you, stranger--high-grade stuff, or the run o' the pen?"
"I'm no gun-fighter, if that's what you mean."
"Then I'd make my get-away like a jackrabbit hell-poppin' for its hole. I got one slant at these fellows in the Buffalo Hump. They're bully-puss kind o' men, if you know what I mean."