“Friend!” scoffed Reddy. “If ever I’m free again, and I run across his tracks, he’ll sure wish he’d never been born. Nawthin’ ain’t too tough for a fellow as’d betray his pals like he done; and after the idea of the raise was all mine, too.”
“But tell ’em all they wanter know, Reddy,” broke in Blaisdell, eagerly. “It’s goin’ to do me a heap of good if they kin lay hands on that slick jay, and snatch the stuff away from him.”
“Well, ye see, we cached the stuff in the middle of a little opening,” the disappointed one went on. “I ’member now how particular he was to have it jest so; but at the time me an’ Blaisdell here never thought he’d give us the double cross like, and sneak back to get away with it all, which he did; the worse luck!”
“But you had horses, it seems,” remarked Frank; “how does it come that you didn’t start in pursuit at once, and overtake your false friend. With two hundred pounds added to the man’s weight, no horse could hold out long. Do you mean to say you couldn’t follow his trail?”
Reddy and his mate exchanged looks, and nodded ruefully.
“He didn’t leave no trail, son,” declared the former, with a shrug of his shoulders that stood for more than his words, perhaps.
“He must have, unless he flew away!” declared Frank.
“Which I take it is jest what our slick Jared Scott done, son!” remarked Reddy.
Bob uttered a cry. Up to that instant he had never dreamed to what the talk was leading.
But Frank made no outcry. In fact, he showed positive signs of having been entertaining a certain amount of suspicion regarding the truth. A number of little things in the immediate past, especially when they had caught some of the words passing between the two men just before the attack, may have given him a clue.