“Well, we’ll do our best to get it straight without him, then. Some of you see what time it is. This man has been dead about a half hour. Mr. Lyster, you had better write down all about it; and, if any one here has any information to give, let him have it.”
His eyes were on the girl’s face, but she said nothing, and he bent to wipe off the stain from the dead man’s face. Some one brought water, and in a little while was revealed the decidedly handsome face of a man about forty-five years old.
“Do any of you know him?” asked the miner, who, by circumstance, appeared to have been given the office of speaker—“look—all of you.”
One after another the men approached, but shook their heads; until an old miner, gray-haired and weather-beaten, gave vent to a half-smothered oath at sight of him.
“Know him?” he exclaimed. “Well, I do, though it’s five years since I saw him. Heavens! I’d rather have found him alive than dead, though, for there is a 286 standing reward offered for him by two States. Why, it’s the card-sharper, horse-thief and renegade—Lee Holly!”
“But who could have killed him?”
“That is Overton’s knife,” said one of the men.
“But Overton had not had it since noon,” said ’Tana, speaking for the first time in explanation. “I borrowed it then.”
“You borrowed it? For what?”
“Oh—I forget. To cut a stick with, I think.”