“An’ I’ve lost the Judge! Ain’t I a box-head, though!”
“That’s all right. Go ahead. What happened?”
“I was moseyin along the ledge. Just when I got to the slope where we come up—passin’ it—I seen a bunch of guys, on horses, coming out of the shadow of an angle, down there. I hadn’t seen ’em before. I knowed somethin’ was up an’ I turned, to light out for shelter. An’ just then one of ’em burns me in the back—with a rifle bullet. It couldn’t have been no six, from that distance. It took the starch out of me, an’ I caved, I reckon, for a little while. When I woke up the Judge was gone. The moon had just come up an’ I seen him ridin’ away on my cayuse, between two other guys. I reckon I must have gone off again, when you shook me.” He laughed, weakly. “What gets me, is where them other guys went, after the two sloped with the Judge. If they’d have been hangin’ around they’d sure have got you, comin’ up here, wouldn’t they?”
Trevison’s answer was a hoarse exclamation. He swung Levins up and bore him into one of the communal houses, whose opening faced away from the plains and the activity. Then he ran to where he had left Nigger, leading the animal back into the zig-zag passages, pulling his rifle out of the saddle holster and stationing himself in the shadow of the house in which he had taken Levins.
“They’ve come back, eh?” the wounded man’s voice floated out to him.
“Yes—five or six of them. No—eight! They’ve got sharp eyes, too!” he added stepping back as a rifle bullet droned over his head, chipping a chunk of adobe from the roof of the box in whose shelter he stood.
Sullenly, Corrigan had returned to Manti with the deputies that had accompanied him to the Bar B. He had half expected to find Trevison at the ranchhouse, for he had watched him when he had ridden away and he seemed to have been headed in that direction. Jealousy dwelt darkly in the big man’s heart, and he had found his reason for the suspicion there. He thought he knew truth when he saw it, and he would have sworn that truth shone from Rosalind Benham’s eyes when she had told him that she had not seen Trevison pass that way. He had not known that what he took for the truth was the cleverest bit of acting the girl had ever been called upon to do. He had decided that Trevison had swung off the Bar B trail somewhere between Manti and the ranchhouse, and he led his deputies back to town, content to permit his men to continue the search for Trevison, for he was convinced that the latter’s visit to the courthouse had resulted in disappointment, for he had faith in Judge Lindman’s declaration that he had destroyed the record. He had accused himself many times for his lack of caution in not being present when the record had been destroyed, but regrets had become impotent and futile.
Reaching Manti, he dispersed his deputies and sought his bed in the Castle. He had not been in bed more than an hour when an attendant of the hotel called to him through the door that a man named Gieger wanted to talk with him, below. He dressed and went down to the street, to find Gieger and another deputy sitting on their horses in front of the hotel with Judge Lindman, drooping from his long vigil, between them.
Corrigan grinned scornfully at the Judge.