Nothing was seen of John C. Calhoun for nearly a week and then, late one evening, he stepped in on Judson Eells in his office at the Blackwater Bank.
“Why–why, Mr. Calhoun!” he gasped, “we–we all thought you were dead!”
“Yes,” returned Calhoun, whose arm was in a sling, “I thought so myself for a while. What’s the good word from Mr. Lynch?”
Eells dropped back in his chair and stared at him fixedly.
“Why–we haven’t been able to locate him. But you, Mr. Calhoun–we’ve been looking for you everywhere. Your riding mule came back with his saddle all bloody and a bullet wound across his hip and the Campbells were terribly distressed. We’ve had search-parties out everywhere but no one could find you and at last you were given up for dead.”
“Yes, I saw some of those search-parties,” answered Wunpost grimly, “but I noticed that they all packed Winchesters. What’s the idee in trying to kill me?”
“Why, we aren’t trying to kill you!” burst out 218Judson Eells vehemently. “Quite the contrary, we’ve been trying to find you. But perhaps you can tell us about poor Mr. Lynch–he has disappeared completely.”
“What about them Apaches?” inquired Wunpost pointedly, and Judson Eells went white.
“Why–what Apaches?” he faltered at last and Wunpost regarded him sternly.
“All right,” he said, “I don’t know nothing if you don’t. But I reckon they turned the trick. That Manuel Apache was a bad one.” He reached back into his hip-pocket and drew out a coiled-up scalp-lock. “There’s his hair,” he stated, and smiled.