“Somebody comin’!” Dutchy warned in a low voice.
They listened and heard the noisy hoofs of a pair of horses and the crunching of wheels. A minute later two men in a buckboard drove up. The sheriff and Sam Hogg walked forward to greet them. Dutchy drew Toothpick aside.
“Some day yuh’ll dig yuhr grave with yuhr tongue,” he growled. “Don’t tell no one that that gent talked to us private.”
“But he didn’t say nothin’ I could understand,” Toothpick protested.
“Maybe the Lava Gang wouldn’t believe yuh,” Dutchy said grimly.
Judge Ransom, one of the two men in the buckboard, climbed out and listened gravely to what the sheriff had to say. He was a man of fifty-five, with the face of a scholar.
“Who’s that jasper?” Dutchy demanded as he nodded toward the buckboard.
“With the judge?”
“Yeh.”
“Gent named Bill Anderson. He’s the new political boss around here,” Toothpick explained.