CHAPTER XXIII
QUICK FACTS
Disregarding the sounds which continued to come from below, Rathburn stood, gun in hand, regarding Sautee with a grim countenance and a cold look in his keen, gray eyes.
“I saw that truck driver held up, Sautee. I was on a ridge below the divide. I saw the tall man in the black slicker, his pardner, an’ the boy. I didn’t figure it would do any good to tell Mannix I’d taken in the show, an’ I was on my way to the desert. I’d be there now if Carlisle hadn’t overstepped the mark in that Red Feather place.”
Sautee pricked up his ears. “You let them arrest you,” he said. “Why–––”
“Because I knew Mannix didn’t know who I was an’ didn’t have anything on me,” said Rathburn quickly. “An’ I got peevish at Carlisle an’ plumb suspicious when he tried to make things look bad for me right there at the start. I began to wise up to the whole lay when you got me out of jail.”
Sautee’s face went white again.
“Your fine explanations of why you couldn’t get that money up to the mine were thin as water, Sautee. You could get that money up there if you wanted to, an’ when you asked me to carry the package to the mine it was a dead out-an’-out give-away. I reckon you didn’t play me to have any sense, an’ I don’t think you gave Carlisle credit for havin’ the brains of a jack rabbit, either.”