Out of the hall behind him trotted Tinnemaha Pete. He stopped, squinting at the visitors.
“Oho! If it ain’t you, Dot! What’re ye doin’—an’ Mr. Spangaree, or I’m a liar! That’s yore ol’ man, ain’t it?” His glance fell on Quintell, then he shuffled up to him and peered boldly into his face. “Billy,” he burst out, giggling, “you ol’ son-of-a-gun, you ketched him! Kill him! Go on an’ kill him——”
The outlaw raised his hand restrainingly. “I bin watchin’ around for you ever since that time, Miles,” he said, addressing the broker. “I oughter shoot you, jest like Pete says. Folks think I’m a pretty tough cuss. Mebby I am. Anyhow, I’m puttin’ you over the hurdles. Now, you tell these people the name you know me by. Go on!”
“His—Jerome Liggs,” faltered Quintell, with an effort.
“Jerome!” gasped Lex. He took a quick step toward the bandit and stared at him with wide eyes. The elder Sangerly frowned bewilderedly. The man who had, for three years, rifled the trains of the M. & S.!
“Now, Miles, tell ’em what you done to the Lucky Boy claims last night!” went on Billy Gee grimly. He jammed the menacing six-shooter into the man’s midriff. “Tell ’em how you salted ’em—everything!”
While the broker began in a reluctant, hesitating voice, Harrison edged quietly out of the room. He sped out through the back door of the bungalow and thence down the dark hillside, racing like mad for the main street to arouse the camp.
Meanwhile, Miles, alias Jule Quintell, confessed. His audacity, self-assurance, arrogance, vanished with that confession. Confronting him, holding him at the point of a gun, was a man who held a long-standing grudge against him, none other than the notorious desperado, Billy Gee, the man on whom he had shunted the crime of robbing the Marysville city treasury.
Billy Gee now turned to Dot and the two Sangerlys. “Folks,” he said evenly. “Miles here jest told you that Jerome Liggs robbed the Marysville city treasury. That’s why I’m Billy Gee. To-night I’m turnin’ him over to Sheriff Warburton, an’ Tinnemaha Pete—who used to be janitor of the Marysville city hall—he’ll swear he saw Treasurer Miles actin’ mighty suspicious in his office, round one o’clock one night.”
“Will I? Will I?” cried the old desert rat jubilantly. “Reckillect, Billy, what I told you? I seen him puttin’ a package——Kill him, Billy! Why don’t you go on an’ kill him! Don’t be a damn fool! D’ye hear?”