"You want to look out when you come down into Wyoming," said the sheriff with a chuckle. "I've known Chicago detectives to come down here and have their socks stolen off their feet!"
"Aw, they ain't detectives," argued Tommy. "They belong to this bunch of train robbers. I saw 'em talking with the robbers not very long ago. You just ask these robbers if these two men don't belong to their gang."
As Tommy spoke he turned to where the two robbers lay and gave a very grave and significant wink.
"They belong to our gang, all right enough," one of the outlaws stated, remembering various indignities they had received at the hands of detectives.
"That's a lie!" thundered Katz.
"Lie nothing!" replied the outlaw. "These fellows brought in two burros loaded with provisions for us, and we haven't been able to get to them yet. If you go back in the valley to the west, and travel north a few miles, you'll find where the burros and provisions are hidden away."
Tommy drew nearer to the outlaw and under pretense of picking something from the floor whispered in his ear:
"We'll see that you get a year off your sentence for that. We've just got to get rid of these imitation detectives."
"I don't believe you can make it stick, Katz," the other outlaw cried out, apparently in a very serious tone, although there was a wrinkle of humor about his grim mouth. "When we started out to rob the Union Pacific train you promised to see that we got provisions, and you didn't keep your word!"
The eyes of the two detectives stuck out, as Tommy afterwards expressed it, far enough to hang a coat and hat on. They almost foamed with rage as they stamped about the cavern, still linked together with the steel handcuffs.