“Course he did! Wouldn’t you ’a’ done the same?”
Fred Glenn shook his head. “That boy’s only a harmless nut,” he maintained. “He’s wrote the craziest stuff you ever read all over the walls o’ his cell. Somethin’ about Moses and Aaron and some more of ’em—one o’ these religious cranks, I reckon.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that, Fred, but I know his tie was found in the mountains, and——”
“Yes, he told me about that tie. It was hisn. Owned up right pronto. Said him and t’other fella’d been in the mountains lookin’ to buy a couple spans o’ mules, belongin’ to a party in Sycamore Grove. They was up there on pasture. I telephoned to Sycamore Grove from Opaco when he’d told me that, and, sure enough, it all happened just like he said. I know the man that’s holdin’ them mules for sale.”
“And when ye left here ye didn’t suspicion him and t’other fella?”
“No,” replied Glenn. “Just the same, I knew it was his tie, ’cause I found where a tie’d been charged to him on the books o’ the Mangan-Hatton camp, and the clerk showed me a box o’ ties just like that un. But I was workin’ on another trail altogether, Squawtooth. And Dave Denmore hadn’t oughta took things in his own hands like he did. It was plumb loco to think of arrestin’ them two, when they’d just come in with a string o’ mules and things worth half o’ the sum stole from the stage. They wouldn’t ’a’ beat it and left behind that much prop’ty, would they? So why take ’em up?”
“Course I thought of all that,” admitted Squawtooth. “But everything pointed to this pair as the guilty ones, and for my part I hadn’t no time to reason things out. It was my girl I was thinkin’ of most. And so you don’t think them boys are guilty after all?”
The sheriff shook his head. “I was on another trail altogether,” he repeated. “Guess I oughta told my dep’ties more; but I got a way o’ keepin’ things to myself till I get the come-alongs on my man. I’ve found it the safest way.”
“Yes; yes—o’ course. But who was ye lookin’ up?”
“Well, us sheriffs get inside information sometimes when a bad actor drifts into our county, just like city policemen do. I already knew they was a couple o’ tough nuts at this here Stlingbloke—more’n a couple, I reckon, for that matter. But I’d been sent word about these two, and I was lookin’ ’em up and tryin’ to connect ’em with the pink tie. I had the foot measurements, you know; they was taken right where the holdup was pulled off. I’d already measured a pair o’ shoes belongin’ to this Falcon fella at Mangan-Hatton’s, and they didn’t fit either measurement. Then at Opaco to-day I measured Daisy’s shoes. Nothin’ doin’ again.