"Any more to say, Lonergan?"
"Plenty. You can't stay here from now on. You don't know when the rest of the men will come back and make it hot for you. You can't prove any of the charges you've made or hinted at, or anything that the girl has said. Besides, I don't expect the law would listen to you while you're wearin' that mask. You'd like to turn us all over to the law and collect some rewards, but that'd be downright hard to handle because there's quite a few of us here and you'd have to take us through the Gap and run the risk of meeting our friends. You can't very well take the girl and the four youngsters away with you for the same reason. You leave here alone, and we'll simply make out another form like the one you've stuck in your pocket and have the signatures made all over again. When you leave, there's a damn good chance that one of us will drill you."
Penny thought she saw uneasiness in the masked man. She glanced from him to Lonergan while she too wondered what could be done. She wanted nothing less than to be left there with those killers, especially after what she had heard about Gimlet and Yuma. Now there would be no one to witness whatever might transpire.
"Have you," asked the masked man, "any propositions?"
Penny saw the wink that Lonergan showed Sawtell; she wondered if the masked man saw it too.
"Maybe so," the gambler said. "You seem to know a lot about things here. Now just forget what you know, take off that mask, and let us see who you are, and then either join up with us or ride away and keep your mouth shut."
The tall stranger seemed to be considering. Penny wanted to scream out a warning that he would never be allowed to leave the place alive. He would be killed, no matter what his decision might be.
Lonergan went on.
"You must have brains enough to realize that you wouldn't be able to prove that any of us had a hand in murdering those Texas Rangers. Why, we could even prove we didn't do it, by the footprints of an Indian around the place where they've been buried."
So the graves had been found. The masked man added this minute detail to his stored-up knowledge.