On the day following Billy Gee’s spectacular escape from Sheriff Warburton, Coates and Tyler, the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad detectives, temporarily abandoned their search for the suspected cache on the Huntington ranch, and motored away over the fifty-odd miles to the station of Mirage, backtracking the bandit’s course to the distant grading camp where he had robbed the paymaster’s car.
At Lex Sangerly’s request, the Geerusalem constable—an official regarded more as an ornament than as a legal necessity in the township—detailed a number of his deputies to guard the ranch against the possibility of Billy Gee’s return; for Sangerly was more convinced now than ever that the disappearance of the twenty thousand dollars centered around the Huntington place. He reasoned, therefore, that the bandit, if alive, would come back after it.
The morning after Lemuel sent the telegram to Mrs. Liggs asking her to join him and Dot in San Francisco, for the purpose of selecting the girl’s wardrobe, the little dry-goods storekeeper had informed Lex, when he voiced his surprise at her trunks and suit cases being loaded on a freight wagon, that she was leaving for the metropolis to be gone an indefinite period. A few days later, however, he learned that Mrs. Liggs had sold out her business. He wondered vaguely, regretfully, over this. It seemed to him that she at least might have told him of her plans. He couldn’t understand it. It was not like her—certainly, not like the Mrs. Liggs he had known in the past, the wistful little woman whom he had found again and still loved, second only to his dead mother.
Meanwhile, Coates and Tyler back from their painstaking, arduous investigation of the route Billy Gee had taken from the grading camp into Soapweed Plains, reported to Sangerly that, even as Warburton had stated, there was not the remotest likelihood that the outlaw had hidden his stealings on the way. They had found that he had not dismounted once throughout his long heartbreaking ride.
This discovery simply served to strengthen all the more the theory that the ranch was the site of the missing loot, and again these two sleuths set diligently to work to find it, making an exhaustive hunt of the premises, exploring the barn from mudsill to rafter, prying into every nook and corner of the house, wielding the pick and shovel in the garden, the corrals, the field, questing with the ardor of bloodhounds each spot or locality where a man would be tempted to conceal a stolen fortune.
After a week of this, they talked the matter over between themselves and they agreed that by all the signs Lemuel Huntington knew more about the disappearance of the money than any other living man—not even excepting Billy Gee. They were absolutely convinced that, while his daughter might have acted solely from humanitarian reasons in giving aid to the wounded outlaw, her father unquestionably had not only collected the reward for capturing the fellow but had succeeded in getting possession of the contents of the saddlebags as well.
It was obvious, they argued, that since Huntington had taken Billy Gee into custody so easily—desperadoes, their experience told him, did not submit without a struggle—he had doubtless been shrewd enough to study the bandit’s movements for some time prior to getting the drop on him. Such being apparently the case, it followed then that Dot’s father had seen the outlaw cache his stealings; and after delivering his prisoner to Warburton, he had returned home and robbed the cache, feeling himself secure in the belief that Billy Gee would, in all probability, go to jail without divulging the hiding place of a treasure whose value was such as to assure him of a comfortable stake against the day of his release, providing, of course, it was never found. Moreover, Coates and Tyler began to discern where Huntington’s hurried trip to San Francisco was the result of sudden panic, brought on by the haunting thought that in some way suspicion might fasten on him and that he might be made the object of a rigid examination which, he felt, he could not undergo. Coupled with this notion, was their prevailing belief that Huntington had taken the twenty thousand dollars away with him.
However, Coates and Tyler said nothing of all this to Sangerly. They were of the opinion that Lex was altogether too lenient in his judgment of Lemuel Huntington; that he was letting Huntington’s seeming hospitality stand in the way of those suspicions which, they were positive, he must have entertained against the rancher. Secretly, they began to regard their superior with a sort of pitying scorn for his obvious gullibility. Their criminal-hunting instincts, too, started rebelling at being held in leash, at being hindered in their functioning by the dictations of a man whose faith in human nature was, to all intents and purposes, destined to bring about the ultimate failure of the case—immunity for Huntington, the loss of the money.
Brooding thus, becoming more and more disgusted with their fruitless search of the ranch, these two conscientious investigators resolved to take matters in their own hands, at the risk of incurring Sangerly’s displeasure and receiving a reprimand into the bargain. They decided that, unknown to him, they would arrest Lemuel on his return, charge him with having made away with the twenty thousand dollars, threaten him with disgrace—anything that would terrorize him, wring a confession from him.
But inquiry of the man who was caring for the ranch during the absence of the Huntingtons brought the disturbing information that, not only was he ignorant of the family’s whereabouts in San Francisco, but he had not the slightest idea when Dot and her father would return. Coates and Tyler, their plans balked at the outset, went back to their half-hearted search, waiting grimly for the arrival of their victim.