“But when I rode to Stlingbloke and on up the line, time your boy Mart was chasin’ me, I nosed it out that one o’ the other parties I was investigatin’ had rode with a water wagon over to a desert water hole west o’ the line that same day. So I thought maybe he’d get off over there, and maybe there’d be some o’ his tracks in the mud about the water. That’s why I rode over there; but I didn’t find any tracks.
“Then I decided to go on to the inside with my measurements and wire ’em to the San Francisco police, who’d first sent me word that these bad actors had drifted down here to Stlingbloke. They got their records up there.
“So I stopped at a little camp below Stlingbloke for that night, intendin’ to go up in the mountains next mornin’ and bring down the boys to have ’em ready for the arrest, then go on to the inside and send my wire. And while I was at this camp that night your boy, who’d been tryin’ to run me down, rode in and give me the cover off the cigarette papers. You know ’bout that.”
“O’ course. Somethin’ funny wrote on it, kinda like you said this Daisy’d wrote in the jail.”
“What’s that?” The sheriff was eying Squawtooth in surprise.
Squawtooth explained as best he could.
“M’m-m—who told you that, Squawtooth?”
“Why, Mart did, for one. And all your dep’ties was talkin’ about it, but nobody could remember just what it was that was written on the cover. But since I’ve heard that this fella Daisy’s always writin’ somethin’ like that everywhere he goes. Seems he’s got a Bible name, and—oh, I didn’t get it all straight. I was too worried, you see.”
“O’ course. But nothin’ like that was wrote on the cover that Mart give me. And the writin’ ain’t anything like the same as this fella done in the jail.”
“That’s funny. What was wrote on ’er, then, Fred?”