"Murder of Mr. Pinkerton, proprietor of the Half-Way House to Camp Kettle."
Apache interrupted:
"Do you happen to have such a thing as quinine about you, Sheriff?"
"Sure," said the sheriff: "always carry it in the hills."
"Give my friend a capsule," he said, "and defer all this talk."
"Murder of Mr. Pinkerton!" I cried; but just then the sheriff stooped and lifted a slip of paper from the floor.
"Literature!" he said. "Keepsake pome or what?"
Then I noticed his firm, kindly eyebrows lift. He turned to Apache Kid.
"This," he said, "seems to have fallen out your press-cuttin' book. I see in a paper the other day where they supply press-cuttin's to piano wallopers and barn-stormers and what not. You should try one o' them. I disremember the fee; but it was n't nothing very deadly."
Then I knew what the cutting was that had come into his possession. It was the cutting Larry Donoghue had shown me in his childish, ignorant pride, the account of the "hold-up" by "the two-some gang." I must have thrust it absently into my pocket, hardly knowing what I was doing, when Canlan's shot interrupted the unusual conversation of that terrible camp.