Two horses came thundering past. They were pack-horses and had been loaded with flour. The flour sacks had been cut open, and the flour had sprinkled over the sweating sides of the horses until they looked like ghosts.
I held the roan steady while the horses went by, and after a while two more horses came past, then a third and a fourth.
Ten or fifteen minutes passed, then I heard the sound of a trotting horse coming down the trail as though it held a rider.
I waited until a black blotch silhouetted against the stars, and saw where the rider was sitting. Then I nestled the stock of the carbine against my cheek.
“You can either stop there or stop a magazine full of lead,” I said casually.
The voice that answered me sounded almost hysterical.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s Harry!” said the voice, and I recognized the young lad who had been helping his father with the pack train.
I rode out from the shadows and his horse snorted and stopped.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m tied,” he said.
I slipped the carbine into the saddle scabbard, but eased the six-gun from my belt as I rode alongside of him, and reached out an exploring left hand. My right hand held the gun in readiness.
What he said was true. He was bound, his arms tied to his sides, his legs tied to the stirrups.
I got out my knife and cut him loose.
“What happened?” I asked.
“A stick-up,” he said. “They shot first, and killed my father. They tied me on my horse and started cutting open the flour sacks. I managed to get my horse started down the trail. I thought maybe I could find you.”
“That’s all you know?” I asked him.
“That’s all I know,” he said.
I looked at the sky. The moon was just coming up.
“You haven’t any weapons?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, “they took those.”
“Any idea who the men were?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, “they wore cloth masks and didn’t do much talking.”
“All right,” I told the boy, “we’re going to start.”
He fell in behind me without a word and we started the horses up the trail.
After a few minutes I came to the scene of the holdup. There was no mistaking it because flour had been spilled all over the trail until it looked like snow. Harry’s father lay sprawled in the trail, a hole in his forehead, his face and clothes all covered with flour. We moved the body and covered it. Harry was sobbing softly.
I picked up the trail of one of the men who had ridden in from a place up the slope, and found where he had been waiting. There wasn’t enough moonlight to read track very well, but I could see that he had sat there for some little time. I back tracked around and finally saw something lying on the ground. I walked over to it. It was a Stetson — the same hat that Bess Drake had worn that afternoon.
I sat staring at the hat in the moonlight while the boy watched me.
After a few minutes I walked back to my horse, climbed in the saddle, put spurs to the roan, and we went up the trail. The boy came riding up the trail behind me.
Halfway down the trail on the other side, we slowed abruptly. I didn’t like the way the roan was keeping his ears forward.
“Can you hear anything?” I asked.
He listened and then shook his head.
I started the roan again, but kept my hand close to the six-gun.
We rounded a little shoulder, and on the trail ahead I could see something moving. I stopped the roan and took a good look. It was a lone horseman. As he swung broadside on, in a patch of moonlight, I recognized the horse. It was the one the sheriff was riding.
I put spurs to the roan and we came up on the gallop.
Sheriff Hostler turned to stare at us as we came up.
“What’s happened?” he asked. “You seem all lathered.”
“Have you seen Bess Drake?” I asked the sheriff.
He shook his head, peered past me to the boy, and said: “Hello, Harry, what’s the trouble?”
“There was a stick-up down the trail,” I said. “They killed Harry’s dad. Bess is missing.”
The sheriff looked at me, and as the moonlight touched the side of his face I could see that his jaw was set, and his lips clamped in a thin line.
“Are you coming with me?” I asked him.
He stared steadily for a moment and then said: “Yes, Zane, I’m coming.”
“All right,” I told him, “let’s go.”
He swept his horse into a gallop and we went tearing down the trail, leaning over on the side as our horses careened around the curves.
We hit the flat, galloped through the dark, deserted streets of Greasewood and thundered up to the office of the mining company.
There were lights on.
I climbed from the saddle, untied my saddle bags, threw them over my shoulder, and walked into the office with my six-gun at my belt, the carbine in the crook of my arm.
Frank Atwood was fully dressed in his pegged riding breeches, his puttees all nicely shined and polished. His eyes were sparkling.
“You got in all right?” he asked me.
I flung the saddle bags on the desk.
“There’s the payroll,” I said.
He pawed at the sacks with feverish hands.
“Good work,” he said. “Did you have any trouble?”
I stood the carbine in the corner.
“No trouble,” I told him.
He looked up at me as I came toward him, caught something in the expression of my eyes, and fell back.
I slammed my right fist straight into his jaw and banged him back against the side of the building. He made a dive for the front of his shirt, and I crossed over a left that threw him off balance, twisted his hand away from the shirt, ripped open the shirt and pulled out a six-gun which I dropped on the floor.
He stared at me with panic-stricken eyes, and lips that were white.
“What I want first,” I said, “is to know where the girl is.”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“You haven’t got time,” I told him, “to pull all that stuff. Tell me where the girl is!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
I looked over my shoulder at the sheriff. The sheriff was standing very grim and very white, but with eyes that were very steady.
“I guess we’d better get a rope,” I said, “and clean this thing up real desert fashion. You can tie a hangman’s knot, sheriff?”
Atwood stared at me and started to yammer.
“You’re crazy!” he said. “You’ve gone stark, staring crazy! I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you want?”
“Listen,” I told him, “that paper was a forgery; the one that Doug Drake had. You wanted to get possession of his property and you wanted to get some money. So you made a check payable to him for what was supposed to be the purchase price of the property, forged his signature as an endorsement, and cashed the check yourself at the bank. You didn’t have any difficulty doing that because it was a mining company check, and the endorsement was a good forgery anyway.
“You went into the city and had some expert forger forge the agreement selling out to the mining company. You sealed it in a bottle because you were afraid that if you left it loose on Drake’s body it might blow away, or if they didn’t discover the body right away, the decomposition might ruin the writing.
“You came back and waited for Drake to come out, or had one of your gang lying in ambush for him. When Drake showed up the man shot him and put the glass jar with the paper in it, in Drake’s hand. Then you waited for the body to be discovered.”