He would have been welcomed at card tables, at the bars, to play and drink with the men who knew they were under suspicion.
There was a rude kind of good humor even in their open hostility.
Besides, one Ranger, or a company of Rangers could not have held the undivided attention of these men from their games and drinks and quarrels except by some decided move.

Excitement, greed, appetite were rife in them.
I marked, however, a striking exception to the usual run of strangers I had been in the habit of seeing.

The Sneckers had gone or were under cover.

Again I caught a vague rumor of the coming of Jack Blome, yet he never seemed to arrive.
Moreover, the goings-on among the habitues of the resorts and the cowboys who came in to drink and gamble were unusually mild in comparison with former conduct.
This lull, however, did not deceive Steele and me.

It could not last.
The wonder was that it had lasted so long.
There was, of course, no post office in Linrock.