Curious crowds collected about the notices, and friends ran to warn those whose names appeared on the list. The men named received the news in grim silence and made no threats, but the roughs who aspired to being bad and had not been mentioned blustered and threatened as to what they would do if the little sheriff from Wyoming had tried to exile them. In a town full of hard men Jack Allen had unerringly selected the ten who were at all times dangerous, who believed in talking with their guns rather than with their mouths.
A short time before the stage left that morning, Jack Allen walked into the office of the jail and found Bill Tucker waiting for him.
“Yuh sent for me?” Jack Allen asked bluntly.
Bill Tucker silently handed Jack a letter. The little officer of the law read it carefully and then eyed Tucker curiously. There was something about the man that he could not place. Tucker should have been elated, and he seemed frightened.
“This gent to be relied upon?” Allen asked after a pause.
The big town marshal nodded. His face seemed to have grown suddenly flabby.
“Well,” said Jack thoughtfully, “he says bluntlike that the ores shipped from the Blue Sky Mine didn’t all come from out the same hole, so I reckon that means Baldy Kane is mixed up with these here quartz robbers.”
Bill Tucker licked his dry lips and nodded.
“Huh!” mused the little sheriff inwardly. “That’s what’s the matter with him. He’s scared plumb pink of Baldy! He’s a hell of an officer!” Allen thought he had found the reason for Tucker’s nervousness. Silently he mapped his campaign. “Baldy Kane is in town, an’ mebbe if I start toward Black Rock I could circle the town an’ get into the gulch an’ have a look-see at his mine without any fuss!”
“Don’t forget he’s a killer, an’ be darned sure to shoot first!” Tucker advised, as Allen strutted out the door.