He leaned luxuriously against the bar, peeled off a bill from his great wad, and to those who came up to congratulate him on his daring feat, remarked with considerable loftiness: “Yes, I reckon it takes somepin’ better’n edjucation to handle a man like Billy Gee.”
Downing his drink, he was turning to make his stately way out of the place, when he heard his name called, and a familiar hand was laid on his arm. He recognized a young mining engineer friend, a recent arrival from San Francisco. With him was a tall sharp-eyed man, twenty-seven or thereabouts, pleasing of face, and with a grave courtesy that instantly marked him in Lemuel’s mind as a total stranger to desert life. He was dressed in a whipcord suit that was partly concealed beneath a voluminous dust coat. On his head was a golf cap, a pair of goggles thrust up over the visor, and he carried driving gauntlets in one hand.
“Mr. Huntington, meet Mr. Sangerly,” said the mining engineer. The two shook hands. “Mr. Sangerly’s father is Western manager of the Mohave Southwestern, and he wanted to thank you in person for your splendid service to his company by your capture of this desperado, Billy Gee.”
Lemuel rubbed his chin in awkward fashion. “There wasn’t nuthin’ much to it, Mr. Sangerly,” he muttered.
“Indeed there was,” declared the other. “Why, this outlaw has robbed our trains eight times in the last three years. Besides our losses, Wells Fargo has suffered greatly. You’ve done us what I candidly look upon as an immeasurable service, and the general office is being thoroughly informed on the matter.” He paused. “There was a side issue relative to your capture that I wished to take up privately with you, Mr. Huntington—if you have time, and if Mr. Lennox,” glancing at his friend, “will excuse us.”
Three minutes later, they were seated across from each other in a booth at the rear of the saloon, a table between them, the waiter departing with their order.
“Now, to start at the beginning, Mr. Huntington,” said Sangerly, coming directly to the point, “Billy Gee robbed our paymaster’s car at a grading camp a few miles east of the station of Mirage. This you doubtless already know. Well, Sheriff Warburton, who had been in close touch with our Los Angeles office ever since he got on the bandit’s trail a week ago, wired us the same night of the robbery. From the tone of his message Billy Gee was heading north and his capture would be affected within ten hours. That was the gist of the thing. Anyhow, I started by auto yesterday morning. As it happened, you beat Warburton to the honors. You brought Billy Gee in, but the twenty thousand dollars he stole from our paymaster is missing.”
“I’d thought about that,” Lemuel replied. “On our way into camp this mornin’, I asked him in pertick’lar what’d become of it, an’ he said it was in safe hands.”
Sangerly lit a cigarette. “That’s what he told Warburton and that’s what’s keeping me here. I’m going to find out, if possible, who has that money. I intend to arrest the party as an accomplice and try to get him—or her—a jail sentence. There’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that this unknown person has been harboring the outlaw in the past and has profited at the expense of our company. You heard, of course, that he is supposed to have relatives somewhere on Soapweed Plains?”
“I don’t believe it,” said Lemuel. “That’s what Bob Warburton was tellin’ me. He said the only reason that folks got that idee, was because after robbin’ a train, Billy Gee’d always head this way an’ disappear. But look at how far it is to the railroad! That’s all talk.”