"It's shore powerful strange how he hates thet handle Las Vegas," went on Roy, imperturbably.
"Roy, tell me what he did--what TOM did--or I'll scream," cried Bo.
"Miss Helen, did you ever see the likes of thet girl?" asked Roy, appealing to Helen.
"No, Roy, I never did," agreed Helen. "But please--please tell us what has happened."
Roy grinned and rubbed his hands together in a dark delight, almost fiendish in its sudden revelation of a gulf of strange emotion deep within him. Whatever had happened to Riggs had not been too much for Roy Beeman. Helen remembered hearing her uncle say that a real Westerner hated nothing so hard as the swaggering desperado, the make-believe gunman who pretended to sail under the true, wild, and reckoning colors of the West.
Roy leaned his lithe, tall form against the stone mantelpiece and faced the girls.
"When I rode out after Las Vegas I seen him 'way down the road," began Roy, rapidly. "An' I seen another man ridin' down into Pine from the other side. Thet was Riggs, only I didn't know it then. Las Vegas rode up to the store, where some fellars was hangin' round, an' he spoke to them. When I come up they was all headin' for Turner's saloon. I seen a dozen hosses hitched to the rails. Las Vegas rode on. But I got off at Turner's an' went in with the bunch. Whatever it was Las Vegas said to them fellars, shore they didn't give him away. Pretty soon more men strolled into Turner's an' there got to be 'most twenty altogether, I reckon. Jeff Mulvey was there with his pards. They had been drinkin' sorta free. An' I didn't like the way Mulvey watched me. So I went out an' into the store, but kept a-lookin' for Las Vegas. He wasn't in sight. But I seen Riggs ridin' up. Now, Turner's is where Riggs hangs out an' does his braggin'. He looked powerful deep an' thoughtful, dismounted slow without seein' the unusual number of hosses there, an' then he slouches into Turner's. No more 'n a minute after Las Vegas rode down there like a streak. An' just as quick he was off an' through thet door."
Roy paused as if to gain force or to choose his words. His tale now appeared all directed to Bo, who gazed at him, spellbound, a fascinated listener.
"Before I got to Turner's door--an' thet was only a little ways--I heard Las Vegas yell. Did you ever hear him? Wal, he's got the wildest yell of any cow-puncher I ever beard. Quicklike I opened the door an' slipped in. There was Riggs an' Las Vegas alone in the center of the big saloon, with the crowd edgin' to the walls an' slidin' back of the bar. Riggs was whiter 'n a dead man. I didn't hear an' I don't know what Las Vegas yelled at him. But Riggs knew an' so did the gang. All of a sudden every man there shore seen in Las Vegas what Riggs had always bragged HE was. Thet time comes to every man like Riggs.