"Say that again."
The stranger smiled. "O'Hagan at the last made a clean breast of everything. He had to. I came West to make him."
"At the last? What does that mean?"
"When a man won't talk you have to make him--even if you fix him so that he can never talk again."
"Is O'Hagan dead?"
"He had his choice. But he had to talk. If I had let him off afterward--I couldn't have gotten away with the information. One of us had to go out, and I had the power to decide which. I chose that O'Hagan should be the one. He was a man steeped in crime. I am not."
"You killed him?"
"I am a very poor talker if I have conveyed another meaning. I tracked him into the mountains. He shot me twice before I could get my hands on him. I twisted the truth out of him, and then as I was about to faint like a school-girl, and as my information was precious, I flung him over a cliff. If I hadn't, you see, he could have fixed me while I was unconscious."
The man's voice was very quiet, very matter-of-fact. Wilmot stared at him with a sort of wondering horror, for he knew that the man was telling the truth.
"He shot you twice. That was some time yesterday. You've seen a doctor?"