"You've been joking, too! I've heard about you. Lisner, I'm ashamed of you! Let Vorhis pull the wool over your eyes, while you sit here and jaw all afternoon, doing nothing!"
"Why, what did you find out?"
"A-plenty. Them stiffs you sent out found Foy's horse, to begin with."
"Sure it was Foy's horse?" queried Lisner eagerly.
"Sure! I know the horse—that big calico horse of his."
"Why didn't you follow him up?"
"Follow hell! Oh, some of the silly fools are milling round out there—going over to the San Andres to-night to take a big hunt mañana. Not me. That horse was a blind. They pottered round tryin' to find some trace of Foy—blind fools!—till I met up with 'em. I'd done gathered in that mizzable red-headed Joe Cowan on a give-out horse, claim-in' he'd been chousin' after broom-tails. He'd planted Foy's horse, I reckon. But it can't be proved, so I let him go. He'll have to walk in; that's one good thing."
"But Foy—where do you figure Foy's gone?"
"Maybe he simply was not," suggested Pringle, "like Enoch when he was translated into all European languages, including the Scandinavian."
"Pringle, if you say another word I'll have you gagged!" said the exasperated sheriff. "Don't you reckon, Nueces, that Cowan brought Foy a barefooted horse? He can't have gone on afoot or you'd have seen his tracks."