“In the roundhouse. I was outside the window. And”—the Hawk's voice thinned in a sudden snarl—“you go to the devil with your questions!”
The Ladybird was craned forward again in the wheel chair listening intently, he sank back now and scowled murderously at the Hawk. MacVightie shrugged his shoulders, handed the package to one of his three men who were with him in the cellar, and drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.
“Get that cash down to the train, and put it back with the gold where it will be under guard, MacGregor!” he ordered brusquely. “And you two carry this fellow”—he rattled his handcuffs in the Butcher's direction—“down there, too. Tell Marston to let you have three or four more men. The chap that Williams has got upstairs there will have to be carried, too, I guess; and our friend here, in the invalid buggy, with the thanksgiving expression on his face, will have to have somebody to push him along over the ruts. Yes, and I'll want a couple to put in the night here—tell Marston to make it four. And now, beat it! You run ahead, MacGregor, and get back as soon as you can—we don't want to tie up the traffic all night!”
The two men picked up the Butcher, and, preceded by their companion with the package of banknotes, went up the stairs. MacVightie caught the Hawk's arm roughly, snapped one link of the steel cuffs over the Hawk's right wrist, and yanked the Hawk ungently over to a position beside the wheel chair.
He snapped the other link over the Ladybird's left wrist, and smiled menacingly.
“I guess there's dead weight enough there to anchor you for a few minutes while I take a look around here!” he said curtly—and turned to Lan-son.
The Hawk was licking at his lips again. Upstairs, the tramp of feet was dying away: There would be no one there now but the other member of the gang who, it seemed, had been hurt when the house was rushed, and the one man who was guarding the prisoner. The Ladybird's cultured voice at the Hawk's side poured out an uninterrupted stream of abandoned oaths that were like a shudder in the nonchalant, conversational tones in which they fell from the twitching lips. MacVightie and Lanson were moving here and there about the place. Snatches of their conversation reached the Hawk:
...Well, I reckon I called the turn, all right, when I said it was the same crowd that was turning out the phony stuff, eh?... Yes, the telegraph set.
... Can't trace the wires until daylight, of course.
... Sure, a clean-up....”