The next morning Clay found the surgeon at his office and sent him down to the Rambler, himself remaining in a general store to purchase a few luxuries for the lad. While there he heard considerable talk about the chase after the train robbers, who were thought to be in that section.
“I’d like to be the one to catch them,” he heard a rough-looking man saying. “It would be worth $10,000 to me. I need the money!”
“If I could only point them out,” another cut in, “I would be satisfied. There’s a reward of $5,000 for just locating them.”
Clay left the store with the reward bee buzzing in his cap. They were not plentifully supplied with money, and a portion of that reward would be very acceptable. And the three men in the mountains! Perhaps they were the very men wanted by the officers.
While he walked about, thinking the matter over, the surgeon came into the one street of the place and stopped him, rather bruskly, he thought. Clay had an idea that it was his fee he wanted.
“Where did you pick up that boy?” the surgeon asked.
“He came into the country with us,” Clay answered, not very pleasantly, for he believed that the surgeon was interfering with something that was none of his business. He turned away, but the other followed.
“You mean that he came from Laggan with you,” he said.
“How do you know that?” demanded Clay, getting angry.
“Well,” sneered the surgeon, “this boy’s description is among those of the hold-up men. He, or some one looking remarkably like him, was seen on the pass, in the company of the men who are believed to have held up the Canadian Pacific train. I’m going now to notify an officer.”