Near the door of the Silver Moon Dance Hall a man pushed by them, anxious; Nabours, looking around him, not hurrying to the bar.
“Dan!” he exclaimed as he caught sight of McMasters. His granite agitation, his naïve disregard of all the post, bridged any gap remaining between them. “Look here! Hell’s to pay!”
“What’s up?” asked McMasters, startled by the look on his face. “Anything gone wrong with—her?”
“Yes! Miss Taisie’s trunk is gone; it’s been stole out of the cart right in front of the door. All her scrip was in it—you know what.”
A sudden flush came to Dan McMaster’s face.
“You are rather a fine foreman, aren’t you, Jim?” said he. “Was that the best you could use that girl?”
“Call me anything you like. I’m a damned old fool. I’ve quit her hire. I gave her the money and quit her hire right here.”
“Don’t you know that Sim Rudabaugh and some of his gang are in town right now? They’ve beat us, after all; they’ve got the scrip, even if they couldn’t stop the herd. Rudabaugh can get his lands now in spite of you and me. He’ll own all the state of Texas, west of the Double Mountain Fork. He’ll get what Miss Lockhart’s father left her, her fortune in lands. We have been making money for him, not her! You let that thing happen right now, when I have almost got my hand on his collar!” He spoke with greater bitterness than any man had ever known of him. At length the indomitable side of his nature took sway again. “But we’ll comb out the town first. Go get McCoyne.”
They did get McCoyne, and solicited his aid in such general search for the missing treasure chest as they hurriedly could contrive. It all was hopeless. No one had seen two men carrying a trunk. The cart was precisely where it had been left. No vehicle had left town, no train. The Del Sol treasure trunk simply had disappeared.
The allies, discomfited, met at last in the open street, Hickok having joined them by this time, and having heard the story.