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." "No," said Laguerre, "no sense een dat." He followed his friend downstairs. "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. When Loudon returned to the barroom, Laguerre and the other two men were sitting at a battered little table. The vacant chair was opposite Archer's lanky friend, and the man sitting in that chair would have his back to the door. "I don't like to sit with my back to the door," stated Loudon. "Some don't," said the lanky man, shuffling the cards. "Meanin'?" Loudon cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. "Oh, nothin'." "Shore?" "Positive, stranger, positive." "That's good. Change seats, will yuh?" The lanky citizen hesitated. Loudon remained standing, his gray eyes cold and hard. Then slowly the other man arose, circled the table, and sat down. Loudon slid into the vacated chair. The lanky man dealt. Loudon watched the deft fingers--fingers too deft for the excessively crude exhibition of cheating that occurred almost instantly. To Archer the dealer dealt from the bottom of the pack, and did it clumsily. Hardly the veriest tyro would have so openly bungled the performance. For all that, however, it was done so that Loudon, and not Laguerre, saw the action. "Where I come from," observed Loudon, softly, "we don't deal from the bottom of the pack." "Do you say I'm a-dealin' from the bottom of the pack?" loudly demanded the lanky man. "Just that," replied Loudon, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest.