“Aunt or mother, dad?” smiled the sheriff indulgently. “Come on now, you ain’t foolin’ me one bit. I’ve heerd for years as how Tinnemaha Pete knows most everythin’ on the Mohave——”
“The hell you say!” exploded the desertarian. He thrust his skinny neck across the camp fire, and concentrated the gaze of his red-rimmed eyes on Warburton’s whiskered face. “I don’t ever reckillect seein’ you afore—not with that crop. Mebby I’d know you shaved. What’s yore name?”
“Jack Sangerly,” lied Warburton.
“Spangaree? Seems to me I met—— Yessir! Agatha give me a knockdown to a dude feller, tol’rable sort—had on ’bout five hunderd dollars o’ sporty togs. That’s the name—Spangaree. But he was a ol’ friend of the fambly, she said.”
Warburton smiled. “That’s my brother, Lex, you met,” he said blandly. “Lex’s bin edjicated in Frisco, an’ I reckon he knew her there. Say, come to think of it, I b’lieve he did tell me she was Billy Gee’s mother! Sure’s shootin’! It was over to the grading camp where Billy held up the paymaster of the M. & S., some time after.” He nodded gravely at the flames, but he was watching the other, hawklike.
Tinnemaha Pete gave vent to a paroxysm of hysterical laughter. “’Tain’t like yore brother to lie to you, is it, Spangaree?” he cackled, and resumed a vigorous puffing at his pipe. Thus for some seconds, then he added abstractedly: “But Agatha she knowed the whole Spangaree fambly, an’ said as how the dude feller I met an’ Jerome was kids together.”
“Jerome—Liggs!” gasped Warburton. In a twinkling, he remembered the embezzlement of the Marysville city funds!
Tinnemaha Pete did not hear him. The little old fellow’s faded blue eyes, now snapping with a malicious fire, were riveted on him.
“If you’re a deteckitive, stranger, God Almighty help ye!” he went on. “Billy Gee hangs out here. Like as not, he’s out in the dark yonder, takin’ it all in. Mark what I say! Close yore damn trap!” He spoke in a heavy, cracked whisper, and Warburton cast a furtive eye over the vicinity.
It was black night beyond the small circle of firelight, the desert hills tragically still, a subtle warning in Tinnemaha Pete’s voice and manner. A short silence fell. The desertarian broke it with a rough chuckle and shook his head at his pipe.