“You bet I was,” Qualley replied with a hearty laugh, “and I told the boys not to put any in there while I was gone. Haven’t run on to any likely clues yet, have you?” he added.
“No, nothing new since we saw you last,” and Scott nudged Murphy again. They were having a very good time with Qualley.
As they approached their own station Murphy seemed to grow thoughtful. Suddenly he leaned forward and unbuttoned the flap of Qualley’s holster. “What sort of a gun have you got there, Qualley? I lost my old Luger back there in a swamp. Had it for ten years and would not have lost it for a farm.”
Murphy drew the revolver from the holster and examined it critically. It was a little blue steel automatic .32, very neat and very business-like. “Not quite such a hard hitter as mine,” Murphy commented, “but I guess she’d kill a man at that.”
“Would it!” Qualley laughed. “Well, I rather think it would if you hit him right. I killed a deer with it at forty yards last fall.”
Murphy continued to toy with the gun. He unloaded it, loaded it, and tested the mechanism several times, tried the grip in his hand and aimed it carefully at all the lights in the car. It was not till the train was coming to a stop at their own station that he leaned over and slipped it back into Qualley’s holster.
“Looks pretty good to me,” Murphy remarked, as though thoroughly satisfied with his examination. “Maybe I’ll get one of those next time. It would not be as heavy to tote around as the old Luger and I reckon it would shoot hard enough for anything I want it for. Don’t want to sell it, do you?”
“Not for anything you would give me for it,” Qualley replied. “I need it in my business almost every day.”
“That’s right,” Murphy admitted thoughtfully, “I reckon you do, all right,” and he stepped on Scott’s foot.
They all three got off the car together and started down the trail which lead by a short cut to the supervisor’s headquarters. It was about midnight and there was no one in sight around the station, not even the agent. The moon was doing its best to shine through a thin curtain of clouds and the trail was easy enough to follow. They walked three abreast through the open country and were soon back on the one subject of conversation which had been the common topic with them now for over two years—the marvelous disappearance of those logs.