"No use," he said. "Slade wouldn't work that way. Bentley is his known representative and anything Bent might do would reflect on Slade. Slade only works through one or two others who arrange for all the rest. Morrow is likely one of his right-hand men. He'd fix it for Carp without Slade's name even coming into it at all. Carp might have a good idea where the money came from but he'd draw it from Morrow and never get to the man behind. We'll never get anything on Bentley for that reason—because he's known to draw Slade's pay."
"Then how can we ever prove anything on Slade?" she insisted.
"It's ten to one we can't," he said. "Even if one of his chief fixers should turn him up it wouldn't work. It would be the same old story—the word of an owner against that of a self-confessed thief. We may have to handle Slade without proof."
Horne came back from Brill's in the early evening and another man rode with him.
"Alden," Billie said. "I wonder what the sheriff is doing out in here."
The sheriff stripped the saddle from his horse and the wrangler swooped down to haze the animal in with the remuda as Alden joined Harris and the girl. He was a tall, gaunt man with a slight stoop. His keen gray eyes peered forth from a maze of sun-wrinkles surmounted by bushy eyebrows, the drooping gray mustache accentuating rather than detracting from the hawk-like strength of countenance. He dropped a hand on the girl's shoulder and looked down at her.
"How are things breaking this season, Billie?" he asked. "Everything running smooth?"
"About the same," she said. They were old friends and the girl knew that Alden would help her in any possible way.
The sheriff turned to Harris.
"I see you've settled down to a steady job, Cal, instead of browsing round the hills alone. I run across Horne at Brill's and he was telling me about some one gunning for you from the brush. Morrow, he says. Do you want me to pick Morrow up?"