Walt Lampson seemed to be waiting for something.

On the third night there was a meeting in the ranch-house living-room.

A meeting which Whitey and Injun attended unseen, by the simple method of hiding.

It may have been wrong to listen, but it was worse to die, and Whitey felt that he surely would expire if he didn't know what was going on.

Injun had no scruples at all.
A traveler might have thought that all trails led to the Star Circle Ranch, that gloomy night, for from every point of the compass came riders, alone, by twos, and by threes.