“Holy Moses! Just look a-here!” said Coyote Bill, who just then entered the house. “If the pocket-book was in here those boys have got it, sure.”
“But I tell you we haven’t got it,” said I. “We are just as anxious to find it as you are.”
“Are you going to give it up?” said Pete, once more drawing out his revolver. “Where is it?”
“You can shoot if you please, but I tell you that you won’t make anything by it,” I replied, looking him squarely in the eye. “That pocket-book is hidden where no one will ever find it.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“No, I don’t! And that is the honest truth.”
“Aw! Pete, let him alone,” said Bill. He stood just on the threshold with his hands against his hips, but making no effort to continue the search we had begun. “He hasn’t got it. It isn’t here, and we might as well go under the house. Have you boys looked up among the rafters?”
“Yes; we have looked everywhere.”
I wasn’t as thoroughly cowed as some boys might have been, for I saw that Coyote Bill was disposed to be friendly toward me; so I had plenty of time to study the expression on Henderson’s face. When he first rode up to the ranch it wore a determined look which said that he knew we had the object of which we were in search, and that he was bound to have it; but when he watched the results of Pete’s examination, and stood in the door and witnessed the confusion that Tom and I had made in the cabin, the expression of serious resolve he had on his countenance gave way to a look of intense and bitter rage. The ranch looked as bad as the wagon did when he got through with it. If he had been alone and held the power in his hands I wouldn’t have felt so much at my ease.
“Well, you see it isn’t here, don’t you?” said Coyote Bill soothingly. “I don’t believe the old man had any other pocket-book, anyway.”