“Uh-huh. Met him and Buck and Mike and a man calling himself Murphy, only he was Matt Brady’s brother—Pincher. Maybe you remember him? Bad to the backbone.”
“You met ’em?” asked Jake Harper. “All of ’em?”
Robinson laughed softly. “Yep. Also Sheriff Tracy. I left town in a hurry. Pincher Brady has a sore hand, but no one was hurt. By the way, I had quite a long talk with Frank Shumway last week.”
“My lord! You did?” Jake Harper was eager, incredulous, astonished. “How come? Thought Buck was keeping a close watch on things.”
“Sam Fisher sent me up to the pen,” Robinson chuckled. “Frank gets out next spring. He’s in pretty fair shape, but badly worried. I bucked him up and promised we’d take care of everything here. By the way, Jake, Templeton Buck has a fine scheme lined out. He got Pincher Brady here to handle it. He bought the Shumway mortgage in Pincher’s name—assumed name, I should say, of Murphy. He aims to let Murphy foreclose, then to step up and rescue Estella. I don’t understand it all myself. Isn’t Estella wise to him?”
Jake Harper tugged at his mustache.
“She is, and she ain’t,” he returned, rumbling his words. “Buck, he’s played his cards mighty cute with her, allowing he’s done all in his power to git Frank out of jail and so forth. Between you and me, I suspicions that Buck has got a friend in the post office, and that he ain’t above monkeying with letters.”
“That’s old stuff,” said Robinson calmly. “You folks up here have a fine county organization, looks like.”
The insistent banging of a tin pan interrupted them, and they hastily departed.
Seated about the chuck table with the half-dozen Circle Bar boys, Robinson sized up things without much trouble. Except for Arnold, the Circle Bar had no young blood at all. An old Swede and his wife took care of the place. The foreman was a grizzled, crippled person who had helped to run down Geronimo—and held his job on the strength of it.