"Here, you! Quit knockin' those balls round!" bawled Max, the bartender. "What you think this is--a kindergarten?" "Why, I paid for all the games I lost, didn't I?" asked Pringle, much abashed. He mopped his face. It was warm, though the windows and doors were open. "Well, nobody's going to play any more with you," snapped Max. "You bore 'em." He pyramided the balls and covered the table. With a sad and lingering backward look Pringle slouched abjectly through the wide-arched doorway to the bar. "Come on, fellers--have something." "Naw!" snarled José Espalin. "I'm a-tryin' to theenk. Shut up, won't you?" Pringle sighed patiently at the rebuff and stole a timid glance at the thinker. Espalin was a lean little, dried-up manikin, with legs, arms, and mustaches disproportionately long for his dwarfish body. His black, wiry hair hung in ragged witchlocks; his black pin-point eyes were glittering, cold, and venomous. He looked, thought Pringle, very much like a spider. "I'm steerin' you right, old man," said Creagan. "You'd better drag it for bed." "I ain't sleepy, I tell you." Espalin leaped up, snarling. "Say! You lukeing for troubles, maybe? Bell, I theenk thees _hombre_ got a gun. Shall we freesk him?" As he flung the query over his shoulder his beady little eyes did not leave Pringle's. Bell Applegate got leisurely to his feet--a tall man, well set up, with a smooth-shaved, florid face and red hair. "If he has we'll jack him in the jug." He threw back the lapel of his coat, displaying a silver star. "But I ain't got no gun," protested John Wesley meekly. "You-all can see for yourself." "We will--don't worry! Don't you make one wrong move or I'll put out your light!" "Be you the sheriff?" "Police. Go to him, Ben!" "No gun," reported Ben after a swift search of the shrinking captive. "I done told you so, didn't I?" "Mighty good thing for you, old rooster. Gun-toting is strictly barred in Las Uvas. You got to take your gun off fifteen minutes after you get in from the road and you can't put it on till fifteen minutes before you take the road again." "Is that--er--police regulations or state law?" "State law--and has been any time these twenty-five years. Say, you doddering old fool, what do you think this is--a night school?" "I--I guess I'll go to bed," said Pringle miserably. "I--I guess if you come back I'll throw you out," mimicked Ben with a guffaw. Pringle made no answer. He shuffled into the hall and up the stairway to his bedroom. He unlocked the door noisily; he opened it noisily; he took his sixshooter and belt from the wall quietly and closed the door, noisily again; he locked it--from the outside. Then he did a curious thing; he sat down very gently and removed his boots. * * * * *