"Saw him yesterday. He was in camp. Was talking mines."
"See anything of Galloway hereabouts of late?"
"No. Haven't seen him for a month or two."
Norton asked a few other questions, kept his own thoughts to himself, and rode away. Less than a mile from the camp he met Jim Galloway riding a sweat-wet horse. The two men reined in sharply, each man's eyes matching the other's for hardness. Galloway's face was red, the fiery red of anger.
"Going back for what you forgot, Jim?" asked Norton.
For a moment Galloway, staring back at him, seemed utterly speechless in the grip of his wrath. Norton did not remember ever having seen such blazing anger in the prominent eyes.
"Between you and me, Rod Norton," muttered Galloway at last, "I have turned a trick or two in my time. But this job is none of my doing and if I wise up as to who put it over he'll go under the sand or into the pen, and I'll put him there."
Norton laughed.
"In other words, some free-lance has made a bid to break your corner on the crime market, eh?" he jeered. "Put one over on you without your knowledge and consent? And without splitting two ways? That what you mean?"
"I mean that I'd pay five hundred dollars out of my own pocket right now for the dead-wood on the man who robbed Kemble."