She studied her visitor for a few seconds, then her eyes lighted up like twin stars. “Lex—Lex Sangerly! You dearest, dearest boy. Of all things—Lex Sangerly! Oh, I’m so—so glad to see you, Lex. So awful glad to see you——” She choked suddenly.
Clutching his hand, she led him inside, locked the door and, chattering her joy, escorted him to the little living room back of the store. She insisted on his occupying her best chair, fixed a footstool for him under his feet, and sat close beside him, feasting her gaze on him, listening hungrily while he talked. And this he did, regaling her with a summary of what he and his family had been doing since she last saw them. It was a dazzling recital of achievement, with happiness and success through every portion of it, one of those inspiring narratives that makes one’s failures seem more prodigious than they really are.
“And now,” he concluded, “the old man has ordered me to camp out here on this desert until I find out what Billy Gee—the notorious outlaw who was captured last night—did with the twenty thousand dollars he stole from our company. I guess you’ve heard all about it.”
She had taken up her knitting while he talked, her fingers manipulating the needles mechanically, though her eyes never left his face. She stopped now to disentangle a snarl and bent her head over it, plucking nervously at the yarn.
“Yes, I’ve heard,” she said, at last. “Have you any idea, Lex——”
“Not the slightest. I’m making a search of Mr. Huntington’s ranch. That’s where he was caught, you know. By the way, you must know Huntington—a rancher, south of here?”
She nodded as she resumed her knitting. “He made ten thousand dollars mighty easy. The easiest money Lem Huntington ever made—bringing in a dying man.” There was a strain of bitterness in her tones.
“He has rendered the community a great service, Mother Liggs; we can’t overlook that fact,” said Lex. “This wretched scoundrel, Billy Gee, has held up M. & S. trains for the past three years, robbed passengers, and laughed at every posse that ever took up his trail. He’s always been invincible, I hear, managing to slip his pursuers whenever he wanted to. He’s been a menace.”
“That might all be, Lex, but there’s some good in the worst of us. You’ll admit that, won’t you?”
He smiled. “You’re not very familiar with this crook’s exploits, I can see that, Mother Liggs. Why, trainmen who have brushed up against him say he’d as soon kill a man as look at him.”