Then Case and Alex came rushing through the doorway, the latter carrying a smoking revolver in his right hand, his face white and pinched.
“Great God, lads!” Clay shouted. “Why did you do it? Why didn’t you wait? Why did you do it?”
Alex threw down the weapon and was about to make some reply when he was grabbed from behind. In an instant steel handcuffs were on his wrists as well as those of Case. There was no struggle. The boys were too dazed to resist and Clay and Don were too dumfounded to say a word.
Then, in another moment, King, Flint, and Ike appeared beside the body, bending over it, and Clay and the others dumbly realized that it was King who had manacled their chums.
“You’re caught with the goods!”
The man who had been called Ike was the speaker, and there was a note of triumph in his tone.
“You boys went too far this time. I’m sheriff here, and I saw the shootin’.”
“What does it mean?” asked Case. “Neither one of us did the shooting. Alex’s gun lay on a chair, and we missed it, and the next—”
“That will do for you!” broke in Ike. “Tell it to the judge.”
“Let him talk if he wants to,” King said, lifting his eyes bravely to the accusing ones of the boys. “He has a perfect right to make any statement he desires to make.”