THE MAN WHO TOOK WATER
and neatly, for he took a pride in his appearance. I could not see quite what the Colonel meant. The man appeared perfectly sound. He had killed eight men, one at Fort Worth, where he had been tried and acquitted on the ground of self-defence, three in Arizona, and four in Painted Rock and at Sweetwater. He carried his "pistol," as we all did, in a hip-pocket. But, unlike most of us, he had his pocket cut to carry one and had it lined with leather. He was a dead shot.
When he spoke I did think that I noticed something a little strange in his voice. There was a sharper tension in it. And he looked round the room almost carefully. When Tom the bar-tender lighted the lamps at the back of the bar, over the shelves on which the "nose-paint" stood in gaudy bottles, Ben Williams spoke sharply.
"Say, put out that lamp," he said, pointing to the one which shone most upon his own face. The other one, as he stood sideways to the bar, was a little behind him.
"Why?" asked Tom, who had grit, as bar-tenders must have.
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