“You ain’t never met up with Billy Gee, eh?” he asked. “I did. Yes, siree, I know him! They ain’t a finer boy no place, they ain’t. An’ along comes this yaller snake, Lem Huntington, an’——”
“How d’you know that Miss Huntington hid Billy Gee?” interrupted Warburton casually. “You’re jest mebby guessin’ at it. You don’t know for sure.”
“Guessin’!” shrilled Tinnemaha Pete. “Guessin’, yore gran’mother. Mrs. Liggs told me, an’ I figger she oughter know.”
“Why?”
“’Cos Lem Huntington—yes, he told her, that’s why. You wait till me an’ him tangle. I found mineral on his ground an’—damn him, he’d better not try no shenanigans with me! Not with ol’ Peter Boyd. Mark me, stranger! I’ll cut him up. Sure’n scat, I’ll cut him up!”
Puffing frantically at his wheezing cold pipe, he bobbed his gray head at the fire, his puckered-up eyes flickering with a mad light.
Warburton tossed a snarl of sagebrush on the coals. As the flames leaped up, he glanced keenly at the queer little shriveled figure across from him. After an interval, he said:
“You reckillect the time las’ summer when Billy Gee nailed that there other sign on the Searchlight’s bulletin board, sayin’ he’d bin huntin’ for Warburton for three year, an’——” Tinnemaha brightened suddenly and gave a wild laugh. “Well, the sheriff told me that he got a-hold of that paper notice,” continued Warburton slowly. “It ’pears like it was a fancy sort o’ wrappin’ paper, an’ Warburton he mosied ’round Geerusalem till he found the store that used that pertickler kind. It was a dry-goods store, run by a woman—Mrs. Agatha Liggs.
“The sheriff didn’t do nothin’ about it then, figgerin’ that Billy Gee mighta jest bought suthin’ there an’ used the paper to write on. Now——” He paused. Trained to read men’s minds by their change of facial expression, he had been quick to note the look of suspicion which flashed across Tinnemaha’s wrinkled countenance. He finished his recital with a wild guess. “What is Mrs. Liggs to Billy Gee—aunt or mother?”
The old man chuckled mirthlessly. He drew a brand out of the fire and lit his pipe. “I ain’t ever goin’ to tell you, mister. I ain’t got no way of knowin’. Mark ye! I don’t keep cases on other folks’ business. Ol’ Tinnemaha Pete’s got too much of his own to ’tend to. Am I right or wrong—what?”