“That may be right,” replied Gilmore. “The fellow is mercenary enough, when it comes down to cases. Well,” the forest ranger went on, “what else could the fellow think? He saw you there in the cave, and knew that you knew the use it was being put to. The only way that he could figure it out was that you were there to interfere with a game which he had almost won by playing a lone hand.”
“And so he dumped our gasoline to keep us from flying back to the canyon or flying over to Monterey to tell what we’d discovered!” suggested Carl.
“That is undoubtedly correct,” Gilmore admitted, “and if the Louise had been there, he doubtless would have crippled her, too.”
“And now,” laughed Havens, “that you have the whole thing settled, without Sloan knowing anything about it, perhaps we’d better go somewhere and have dinner, or supper, or whatever you may call it.”
“We probably can’t get anything here at this time of day,” the sheriff interposed, “but I know of a restaurant down the street where we can get anything from a lobster to an elephant’s ear.”
“I don’t care about spending any money in this place, anyway,” said Havens. “Say, Sheriff,” he went on, “I want to leave with you a little present for your new deputy Stroup. Will you deliver it to him just as I hand it to you without one word of explanation?”
“Surely,” replied the official.
Havens took a note-book from his pocket, tore out a blank leaf, wrote three words on it and signed his name. Then he took a bank-note of the denomination of one thousand dollars from his pocket, folded it up in the paper, stuffed the whole into a hotel envelope which he sealed and passed it over to the sheriff, who took it with evident amazement.
“You don’t do things by halves,” the official observed.
“I try to do things according to my means,” replied Havens. “I should have missed a lot of satisfaction this morning if Stroup hadn’t shown up with his capable fists!”