"Cole Dalton, sheriff," he said gravely. "Yes. And he's the man I came all this way to gather in, Buck. I've been after him for seven years, never guessing until lately that he was out here working the old Henry Plummer game of sheriff and badman at the same time. He's kept under cover, that being always his way; you'd never have thought that Pollard, Broderick, Bedloe were all tools…. But, I got him, Buck. At last."
A moment only Thornton stared incredulously. Then his shoulders twitched as though this was a matter which could not concern him at present and he had other things to think of.
"Pollard?" he asked shortly.
"Over yonder." Comstock nodded toward the patch of brush on the mountainside. "Shot through the head."
"And the others? One was the Kid, wasn't it?…"
But now the Kid answered for himself. He rose to his knees among the stunted manzanita bushes not twenty steps from them and for a moment knelt there, his big bulky body wavering as he tried to bring his rifle to rest at his shoulder, his eyes peering out wildly from a blood smeared face. But his gesture was awkward and slow and uncertain; he was too badly hurt to shoot straight or quick, and Thornton, swift and sure and yet merciful withal, was before him. The Kid's rifle clattered to the ground; the Kid's left arm, the bone broken, dropped uselessly to his side. He tried to steady the gun with his one good arm alone, but it shook hopelessly. He dropped it and turned bloodshot eyes on Thornton.
"Damn you," he said tonelessly. "Better do a clean job, you white-livered coward, or I'll see you hang yet for killin' Charlie…."
"I was outside when he was shot," said Thornton coolly. "I saw just as much as you did. Somebody shot him from behind me."
"Liar!" jeered Bedloe. "An'…"
"Don't be a fool, Bedloe," snapped Comstock. "The man you want is the same man we want; only the other day he had a quarrel with Charlie and got a bullet alongside the head…."