"That this feller was a pilgrim, going somewhere in a hurry. He was held up by some of your young bucks who were off the reservation and feeling a little too full of life for their own good. A touch of bootleg whiskey might have set them going. Mebbe that's where Jim McFann came in. They might have killed the man when he resisted. The staking-out was probably an afterthought—a piece of Injun or half-breed devilment."
"How about the sawed-off shotgun? I doubt if there's one on the reservation."
"Probably that was Sargent's own weapon. He had traveled in the West a good many years. Mebbe he had used sawed-off shotguns as an express messenger or something of the sort in early days. It's a fact that there ain't any handier weapon of deefense than a sawed-off shotgun, no matter what kind of a wheeled outfit you're traveling in."
"It's all reasonable enough, Tom," said Lowell reflectively. "It may work out just as you have figured, but frankly I don't believe the Indians and McFann are in it quite as far as you think."
"Well, if they didn't do it, who could have? You've been over the ground more than any one else. Have you found anything to hang a whisper of suspicion on?"
Lowell shook his head.
"Nothing to talk about, but there are some things, indefinite enough, perhaps, that make me hesitate about believing the Indians to be guilty."
"How about McFann? He's got the nerve, all right."
"Yes, McFann would kill if it came to a showdown. There's enough Indian in him, too, to explain the staking-down."
"He admits he was on the scene of the murder."