"The devil you do? All right. Then here's something else. His brother, the Kid, they call him, swears that you killed him."
"I know," nodded Thornton as quietly as before.
Comstock made no pretence of hiding his surprise.
"I thought you had left before the shooting happened. I was all over town; no one saw you…."
"Except the Kid. He did. He saw me outside the window through which somebody shot Charley."
Comstock returned his attention to his biscuit and gravy.
"I'm a failure as a news monger," he grunted. "Go on. You tell me."
And Thornton told him. Before he had finished Comstock had pushed back his chair and was letting his coffee go cold. For Thornton had told him not alone of what had happened at the Here's How Saloon last night, but of the work that Broderick and Pollard were doing, of all of his certainties and his suspicions, of the "planted" evidence he had found in the hay loft, of the missing saddle. Only he did not mention the name of a girl, and he remembered that Pollard was her uncle and spared him where he could.
"What a game! By high heaven, what a game!" Comstock pursed his lips into a long whistle. Then he banged his first down upon the table, his eyes grown wonderfully bright and keen, crying softly, "I've got him, I've got him at last, and he's going to pay to the uttermost for all he has done in the last seven years … and before! Got him—by thunder!"
"Pollard?" asked the cowboy quickly.