“This is Aimes at Zacaton, Bill,” he said. “A queer guy just blew in here to-night with a grand souse and is sleeping it off now. You know old lady Crump, don’t you? Heard of her at any rate. Well, he says that she’s out in the hills a piece with two other fellers. These two were run out o’ Magdalena last month for talking agin’ the gov’ment and they’re said to be dangerous characters. The place is north o’ the bad lands, over in Socorro County.
“The p’int is, Bill, this here guy says they’ve got heap o’ dynamite and such stuff out there. Them two anarchists ought to be prevented usin’ it; according to this guy, they got no licenses and never heard o’ the new license law. This here is plumb illegal and you’d ought to stop it. Both these fellers are I. W. W. organizers, he says, and prob’ly are German spies; this guy talked with a queer kind of accent.
“No, I wouldn’t think it o’ Mrs. Crump, neither, but you never can tell these days. What’s that? Well, I got the location pretty straight from this guy. Yep, a car can make it; he come into town that way. Get up on the night train and you can take my car out there. Sure, I’ll meet the train. You’re welcome.”
This pleasant duty finished, Aimes dispatched a lengthy telegram to Abel Dorales at Santa Fé. He then summoned the constable in search of Thady Shea. But Shea had vanished from human ken, although the dust-white flivver remained in the garage.
Bright and early next morning Aimes departed in his automobile, went to the railroad and met the sheriff, and brought that official back to town. The hardware merchant was pressed into service as a deputy, and the sheriff took over Aimes’ car.
“I’d like to go along myself,” said Aimes, regretfully, “but I got to ’tend the garridge myself to-day account of my mechanic hurting himself last night and being laid up. Tell ye what, Bill! Why not take the whole crowd right down to Silver City? It’ll save ye comin’ back here, and your new deppity yonder can fetch the car back here. Sure, you’re dead welcome! I ain’t got no use for the car anyhow.”
To this arrangement the sheriff consented gladly, and Aimes watched them depart with a twinkle in his eye. Before Mrs. Crump could possibly return from Silver City, to say nothing of her two men, Abel Dorales would be on the spot to take charge of things. Aimes considered that he had managed things very neatly indeed, and he mentally patted himself on the back that morning.
Ben Aimes, however, did not take local politics into account. It is such little unconsidered trifles which very often go to make up the warp of affairs of larger moment.
Only a few months previously an ancient and honourable gentleman by the name of Ferris had been ousted from the job of justice of the peace, mainly on account of certain hostility to Ben Aimes and the Mackintavers forces. It is quite possible that old man Ferris was no good as a justice, yet he had an inconspicuous but important part to play in the tangled affairs of Thady Shea and Sandy Mackintavers, to say nothing of the seven stone gods.
In broad daylight, therefore, Thady Shea came to his senses. While slow remembrance dawned upon him, he found himself reposing in the back yard of an adobe house; how he got there was never explained. A furred tongue and an aching head gradually brought home some errant sense of shame. This feeling was intensified by a goat-like visage above him.