“Nobody knows I’m kettle-washing, except Pappy Sanders and you,” said Gibson. “I was careful not to let your friend see me at the fire.”
“I’ll do you a good turn sometime,” said Jeff. He rode on in silence for a while and presently was lost in his own thoughts, leaning over with his hands folded on his horse’s neck. In a low and thoughtful voice he half repeated, half chanted to himself:
“Illilleo Legardi, in the garden there alone,
There came to me no murmur of the fountain’s undertone
So mystically, magically mellow as your own!”
Another silence. Then Jeff roused himself, with a start.
“I’ll tell you what, Gibson, you’d better cut loose from me. So far as I can see, you are only a kid. You don’t want to get mixed up in a murder scrape. This would go pretty hard with you if they can prove it on you. Of course, I’m awfully obliged to you and all that; but you’d better quit me while the quitting’s good.”
“Oh, no; I’ll see you through,” said Gibson lightly. “Besides, I know you had nothing to do with the murder.”
“Oh, the hell you do!” said Jeff. “That’s kind of you, I’m sure. See here, who’d sold you your chips, anyway? How’d you get in this game?”
“I got in this game, as you put it, because I jolly well wanted to,” replied Charley, with becoming spirit. “That ought to be reason enough for anything in this country. Nothing against it in the rules—and I don’t use the rules, anyhow. If you must have it all spelled out for you—I knew, or at least I’d heard, that your friends were away from Rainbow; so I judged you wouldn’t go up there. Then I knew those four amateur Sherlocks—they’re in my set in Arcadia. When two of the deerhunters, after starting at two A.M., came back to Arcadia the same morning they left, looking all wise and important, and slipped off on the train to Escondido, saying nothing to any one—and when the other two didn’t come home at all—I began to think; went down to the depot, found they had gone to Escondido, and I came on the next train. I found out Pappy was your friend; and when he got your little hurry-up call I volunteered my services, seeing Pappy was too old and not footloose anyhow—with a wife and property. That’s the how of it.”
“Oh, yes, that’s all right; but what makes you think I’m innocent?”
“I know Mr. White, you see. And Mr. White seems to think that at about the time the bank was robbed you were—in a garden!” Charley’s voice was edged with faint mockery.