“Now, don’t pay any attention to Spruce and me, Canby,” urged Demarest. “We would have gone on, but your housekeeper said you’d likely be in soon. So we stayed to find out if there was any good news to report or if we could be of any help. We’ve a bunch of men and animals and supplies to put at your disposal. Just say the word, Canby. There, there, now! Cheer up; everything’ll come out all right. It always does. I’ll personally help you hang that upstart of a pot-walloper when we get him. I’ll put the noose around his infernal neck, and you pull the rope, and I’ll kick the son of a gun as he’s goin’ up! Now have your conference with the sheriff—we’ll wait and talk everything over afterward.”
“I thank ye kindly,” said Squawtooth, and motioned the sheriff to follow him to the veranda.
“Well, Fred, ye didn’t get up to us,” he began as they seated themselves.
“It snowed like the mischief on the other side o’ the range,” the sheriff explained. “’Twouldn’t ’a’ been so bad, maybe, if the wind hadn’t blowed all the snow into the gaps in the road. We was in a car with the pups an’ got stalled, o’ course. Hadta go back. Meant to put the pups on the train and bring ’em through the pass to the desert side; but we like to never made it back to Sycamore Grove even. Didn’t till late this mornin’.”
“Yes, I knew how the gaps would be, once she begun to snow,” Squawtooth exonerated him. “Dogs wouldn’t been no good, anyway, once the storm set in. Did ye take Halfaman Daisy to the county seat?”
The sheriff scraped his feet. “No,” he replied, seeming to the other to be a bit uneasy. “He’s still in the lockup at Opaco. Funny business!”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Him bein’ pinched and all. I had a talk with ’im comin’ through. He said he’d just as soon stay locked up a little while longer, if it would do any good.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Well, I never meant to have that boy arrested, Squawtooth. Ner that other fella, either. Dave Denmore took that all on ’imself the minute I’d started for the inside. Course I left Dave in authority. He didn’t know what I was workin’ on, and when the evidence that he did know about begun pilin’ up against this pair, he thought he’d take no chances, and pinched Daisy.”