The wretched man had long passed the time when he could think coherently.
“I didn’t do it—he—I swear I——”
“Shut up; that’s a lie. If yuh didn’t, who did?”
Little by little, Allen drew the whole story from Squint. Squint had been drunk at One-wing McCann’s hotel for a week before the murder. Then Boston Jack had come to him and taken him away. Squint was ordered to wait for Slivers at the crossroads and send him back to his own ranch on a wild-goose chase. Squint swore he had known nothing about the murder until afterward. He had once quarreled with Iky Small, and Boston Jack had threatened to hang the murder on him unless he ran away. Lefty Simms had accompanied him part of the way on his trip. Lefty had been a friend of Iky Small’s, and the two had decided, from various things they had heard and known, that Spur Treadwell was the principal in the plot against Slivers. They had discussed ways of levying blackmail on Spur after he was married to Dot.
Jim Allen was disappointed in the little information he had learned from Squint, but it added one more link in the chain of evidence against Spur Treadwell and definitely proved to him that Spur and Boston Jack were partners or at least closely associated. It also linked One-wing McCann with both Boston and Spur and made Allen at last see light in the tangled financial affairs of the ranch.
Resolving to pay a visit to Boston Jack’s place that night, he briefly told the others what he had learned from Squint and then mounted one of his gray horses. With the other one following, he started toward the Hard Pan for another attempt to discover its secret.
“The aggravatin’ little cuss! He don’t tell no one nothin’,” Slivers growled.
“Yeh, his trail is sure hard to follow,” Jack Allen smiled.
All that night Jim Allen rode through the winding, twisting maze of blind passages and cul-de-sacs in the Hard Pan. But even he, skillful tracker that he was, could find no trail in the flintlike surface. Toward morning, he circled the Hard Pan and reconnoitered Boston Jack’s ranch. But here, also, he drew a blank—he could find nothing that indicated rustling was going on at the ranch.
It was toward dawn when he at last turned and headed back toward the cavvy. He was sure he had reached it without being seen, but in this he was wrong. It was the two grays streaking through the pale morning light that had betrayed him and told Lefty Simms who he was. And Lefty’s agile brain was busy with plans to trap the Wolf as he headed back to the Double R.