“What do you mean?” Jack asked hotly.
“Just this. You are going to meet two old acquaintances, namely, Sheriff Smith of Nootwyck and a man you know as Valentine Mills; and my reason for not telling you before is I knowed you’d wear yourself out before we got here.”
“What the deuce is Mills doing here, and how long since you turned detective?”
“Well, I aint studied human natur’ all these years for nothing, and when you told me of Old Ninety-Nine’s mine, something you dropped carelessly about Valentine Mills set me to thinking, and this ended in acting, with the result that it is proved beyond a doubt that Valentine Mills and Robert Bruce are one. I aint particular sharp, just been doin’ a little missionary job. I haint no time for just ordinary sinners but when God Almighty blazes a trail straight to a stomped-down, pusley-mean, miserable coyote like Robert Bruce alias Valentine Mills and all his other aliases, it’s my bounden duty to convert him!”
“Is Sheriff Smith at Mt. Fisher now?”
“Yes, he is to meet us in that piece of woods yonder,” pointing to the left. “There he’ll wait. It’s only a few rods from the mine, and you’re to go on ahead to open the way.”
“I’ll do it with a right good will,” said Jack in a voice that boded Mills no good.
“We’ll be on the watch, and when your right hand goes up, Sheriff Smith’ll appear on the scene, and at his signal I’ll show up. I reckon he won’t be proper glad to see me!” Watson chuckled.
In another half-hour they reached the woods by a trail that concealed them from view and their low “Hello” was answered by Sheriff Smith, who anxiously awaited their coming. Like Jack, this was his first experience in a “norther,” but he had been more fortunate in not having left Fredericksburgh until that morning.
Sheriff Smith was a typical mountaineer, tall, muscular and without an ounce of flesh to spare. No one had ever been hung in Ulster County—his enemies hinted, much to his regret.