CHAPTER VII
THE MAN WITH THE WAXED MUSTACHEIt was about a week later, well past midnight, when the stage rattled down the grades which led into Hawk Hole. Olsen, the regular driver, was alone on the seat, with one passenger inside the stage.
They swept into the Hole and out onto the flat country, the four horses running at top speed. Far ahead of them a lantern blinked beside the road. Olsen drew the team down to a trot and stopped near the lantern, where a man held the heads of a team hitched to a buckboard.
The man climbed down from inside the stage and walked over to the lantern. He was a big man, almost as big as Big Medicine Hawkworth, and of about the same age. But this man’s face was pale and heavily lined, with a hawklike nose and piercing black eyes. His white mustache was waxe
