A hard-faced man in a suit of checks more than a shade too loud was
sitting in the section beside the girl from Brush. He was making talk
in an assured, familiar way, and the girl was listening to him shyly
and yet eagerly. The man was a variation of a type known to Lindsay.
That type was the Arizona bad-man. If this expensively dressed fellow
was not the Eastern equivalent of the Western gunman, Clay's experience
was badly at fault. The fishy, expressionless eyes, the colorless
face, the tight-lipped jaw, expressed a sinister personality and a
dangerous one. Just now a suave good-humor veiled the evil of him, but
the cowpuncher knew him for a wolf none the less.

Clay had already made friends with the Pullman conductor. He drifted
to him now on the search for information.

"The hard-faced guy with the little girl?" he asked casually after the
proffer of a cigar. "The one with the muscles bulging out all over
him--who is he?"

"He comes by that tough mug honestly. That's Jerry Durand."

"The prize-fighter?"

"Yep. Used to be. He's a gang leader in New York now. On his way
back from the big fight in 'Frisco."

"He was some scrapper," admitted the range-rider. "Almost won the
championship once, didn't he?"

"Lost on a foul. He always was a dirty fighter. I saw him the time he
knocked out Reddy Moran."