the night of our jamboree on the Limited, I see. That's mightily careless of you, ain't it?”
Instinctively a shaking hand clutched at the kerchief. “It don't cut any ice because a hold-up wears a mask made out of stuff like this.”
“Did I say it was a mask he wore?” the gentle voice quizzed.
Scott, beads of perspiration on his forehead, collapsed as to his defense. He fell back sullenly to his first position: “You can't prove anything.”
“Can't I?” The sheriff's smile went out like a snuffed candle. Eyes and mouth were cold and hard as chiseled marble. He leaned forward far across the table, a confident, dominating assurance painted on his face. “Can't I? Don't you bank on that. I can prove all I need to, and your friends will prove the rest. They'll be falling all over themselves to tell what they know—and Mr. Dailey will be holding the sack again, while Leroy and the rest are slipping out.”
The outlaw sprang to his feet, white to the lips.
“It's a damned lie. Leroy would never—” He stopped, again just in time to bite back the confession hovering on his lips. But he had told what Collins wanted to know.
The curtain parted, and a figure darkened the doorway—a slender, lithe figure that moved on springs. Out of its sardonic, devil-may-care face gleamed malevolent eyes which rested for a moment on Dailey, before they came home to the sheriff.
“And what is it Leroy would never do?” a gibing voice demanded silkily.
Scott pulled himself together and tried to bluff, but at the look on his chief's face the words died in his throat.
Collins did not lift a finger or move an eyelash, but with the first word a wary alertness ran through him and starched his figure to rigidity. He gathered himself together for what might come.
“Well, I am waiting. What it is Leroy would never do?” The voice carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very presence had stricken conspirators dumb.
Collins offered the explanation.
“Mr. Dailey was beginning a testimonial of your virtues just as you right happily arrived in time to hear it. Perhaps he will now proceed.”
But Dailey had never a word left. His blunders had been crying ones, and his chief's menacing look had warned him what to expect. The courage oozed out of his heart, for he counted himself already a dead man.
“And who are you, my friend, that make so free with Wolf Leroy's name?” It was odd how every word of the drawling sentence contrived to carry a taunt and a threat with it, strange what a deadly menace the glittering eyes shot forth.
“My name is Collins.”
“Sheriff of Pica County?”
“Yes.”
The eyes of the men met like rapiers, as steady and as searching as cold steel. Each of them was appraising the rare quality of his opponent in this duel to the death that was before him.
“What are you doing here? Ain't Pica County your range?”
“I've been discussing with your friend the late hold-up on the Transcontinental Pacific.”
“Ah!” Leroy knew that the sheriff was serving notice on them of his purpose to run down the bandits. Swiftly his mind swept up the factors of the situation. Should he draw now and chance the result, or wait for a more certain ending? He decided to wait, moved by the consideration that even if he were victorious the lawyers were sure to draw out of the fat-brained Scott the cause of the quarrel.
“Well, that don't interest me any, though I suppose you have to explain a heap how come they to hold you up and take your gun. I'll leave you and your jelly-fish Scott to your gabfest. Then you better run back home to Tucson. We don't go much on visiting sheriffs here.” He turned on his heel with an insolent laugh, and left the sheriff alone with Dailey.
The superb contempt of the man, his readiness to give the sheriff a chance to pump out of Dailey all he knew, served to warn Collins that his life was in imminent danger. On no hypothesis save one—that Leroy had already condemned them both to death in his mind—could he account for such rashness. And that the blow would fall soon, before he had time to confer with other officers, was a corollary to the first proposition.
“He'll surely kill me on sight,” Scott burst out.
“Yes, he'll kill you,” agreed the sheriff, “unless you move first.”
“Move how?”
“Against him. Protect yourself by lining up with me. It's your only show on earth.”
Dailey's eyes flashed. “Then, by thunder, I ain't taking it! I'm no coyote, to round on my pardners.”
“I give it to you straight. He means murder.”
Perspiration poured from the man's face. “I'll light out of the country.”
The sheriff shook his head. “You'd never get away alive. Besides, I want you for holding up the Limited. The safest place for you is in jail, and that's where I'm going to put you. Drop that gun! Quick! That's right. Now, you and I are going out of this saloon by the back door. I'm going to walk beside you, and we're going to laugh and talk as if we were the best of friends, but my hand ain't straying any from the end of my gun. Get that, amigo? All right. Then we'll take a little pasear.”
As Collins and his prisoner reappeared in the main lobby of the Gold Nugget, a Mexican slipped out of the back door of the gambling-house. The sheriff called Hawkes aside.
“I want you to call a hack for me, Del. Bring it round to the back door, and arrange with the driver to whip up for the depot as soon as we get in. We ought to catch that 12:20 up-train. When the hack gets here just show up in the door. If you see Leroy or Neil hanging around the door, put your hand up to your tie. If the coast is clear, just move off to the bar and order something.”
“Sure,” said Hawkes, and was off at once, though just a thought unsteady from his frequent libations.
Both hands of the big clock on the wall pointed to twelve when Hawkes appeared again in the doorway at the rear of the Gold Nugget. With a wink at Collins, he made straight for the cocktail he thought he needed.
“Now,” said the sheriff, and immediately he and Dailey passed through the back door.
Instantly two shots rang out. Collins lurched forward to the ground, drawing his revolver as he fell. Scott, twisting from his grasp, ran in a crouch toward the alley along the shadow of the buildings. Shots spattered against the wall as his pursuers gave chase. When the Gold Nugget vomited from its rear door a rush of humanity eager to see the trouble, the noise of their footsteps was already dying in the distance.
Hawkes found his friend leaning against the back of the hack, his revolver smoking in his hand.
“For God's sake, Val!” screamed Hawkes. “Did they get you?”
“Punctured my leg. That's all. But I expect they'll get Dailey.”
“How come you to go out when I signaled you to stay?”
“Signaled me to stay, why—”
Collins stopped, unwilling to blame his friend. He knew now that Hawkes, having mixed his drinks earlier in the evening, had mixed his signals later.
“Get me a horse, Del, and round up two or three of the boys. I've got to get after those fellows. They are the ones that held up the Limited last week. Find out for me what hotel they put up at here. I want their rooms searched. Send somebody round to the corrals, and let me know where they stabled their horses. If they left any papers or saddle-bags, get them for me.”
Fifteen minutes later Collins was in the saddle ready for the chase, and only waiting for his volunteer posse to join him. They were just starting when a frightened Chinaman ran into the plaza with the news that there had been shooting just back of his laundry on the edge of town and that a man had been