Within ten minutes she gleaned that Broderick was a miner, that he had a claim of some sort in the mountains back of Hill's Corners, to the eastward, that a couple of years ago he had made his "pile" in the Yukon country and that he had lost it in unwise speculation, that he knew more than the names of the streets of the chief cities of both coasts, that he had strong hopes of making a strike where he was and of selling out at a good figure to a mining concern with which he was already corresponding. And yet this light miscellany of information was so brightly sprinkled into the flow of talk upon a score of other matters that it did not seem that the man was ever talking of himself.
Finally Pollard, catching a sharp look from Sheriff Dalton, got up and stepped into the kitchen where Mrs. Riddell was. The woman went out into the yard and Pollard came back. Before he had taken his chair again Dalton said abruptly, turning upon the girl:
"Pollard mentioned your seeing the stick-up man at Harte's cabin. Tell us about it."
She told him swiftly, eager to have it over with, conscious that the eyes of all three of the men watched her with a very intense interest. From her account she omitted only that which concerned her personally and alone and of which she had not even spoken to her uncle.
"You're sure it was Thornton?" demanded the sheriff when she had finished. "Dead sure?"
"Yes," she answered resolutely, defiant of her own self that hesitated to fix on an absent man the crime of which she believed him guilty.
Dalton sat still save for the drumming of his thick fingers upon the table cloth. Presently his big stocky body turned slowly in his chair as he looked from Broderick to Pollard, the hint of a smile merely making his eyes the harder.
"So," he said, his wide shoulders rising to his deep breath, "it looks like all we got to do is just go out and put our rope on Mr. Badman!"
"It looks like it, Cole," laughed Broderick gently. "Only when you get ready to pull off your little roping party I wish you'd let me know. He don't look like he's the kind to lie down and let you hog-tie him, does he, Miss Waverly? They say he's half Texan an' the other half panther. You want to be quick on the throw, Cole. Remember the way he got the Kid last winter!"
"The only wonder," growled Dalton, "is that the Kid hasn't taken him off our hands and got him long ago!"