“I should think,” he added, “that that there Westcott person’d wanter kick himself fer a sunbaked ’dobe ape, when he finds out what he’s bound to find out, when he gets askin’ questions along o’ Phoenix.”
“The plumb fool,” he said, again. “To think he don’t know Jim Texas confessed to killin’ Dan. The pizen-snake always said he would, an’ poor old Dan was mighty foolhardy about it.
“But, God!”—his tone was full of pity—“To think that ‘Gard’ was that poor devil of a Barker! How in tunk did he ever git where he is now?”
He picked up a bit of stone and flung it at the yearlings; not because he bore them a grudge, but through sheer vexation of spirit.
“If he’d only a’ told me,” his thoughts went back to Gard. “If he’d only a’ trusted me, ’stid o’ writin’ it out fer that hell-dog to find.” He leaned upon the top-rail of the corral and sighed.
“Lord,” he said, “I’m pretty near all in. It’s too much fer Sandy!”
He could not understand Gard’s agitation over the loss of his packet, if, as he now surmised, it merely contained the papers by which Westcott had identified him. He pondered the matter for some time, and then light dawned.
“Look a’ here!” he cried. “He’s in the same boat’s Westcott! He’s bin up in the mountains ever since he made his getaway; that’s what! Fer some reason or other he’s just come down, I wondered where in tunk he’d drifted in from. An’ he ain’t found out yet about Jim Texas.”
Silence again, while Sandy meditated upon the situation. Then another phase of it struck him.
“What’s he doin’ round here, anyway? Why ain’t he showin’ some enterprise? What’s he hangin’ round Kate Hallard for?”