"Well, take it all in all," pursued Arizona, "this deal of mine is pretty rotten, but you'd swing just the same for one murder as for two. They won't hang you no deader, eh? And when they come to look at it, this is pretty neat. Sandersen wasn't no good. Everybody knowed that. But he had one thing I wanted—which was you and the twenty-five hundred that goes with the gent that brings you into Sour Creek. So, at the price of one bullet, I get the coin. Pretty neat, I say ag'in."
Dropping the revolver back into the holster he patted it with a caressing hand.
"There's your gun," went on Arizona, chuckling. "It's got a bullet fired out of it. There's Sandersen's gun with no bullet fired, showing that, while he was stalking you, you shot and drilled him. Here's my gun with no sign of a shot fired. Which proves that I just slid in here and stuck you up from behind, while you were looking over the gent you'd just killed."
He rubbed his hands together, and bracing himself firmly on his stubby legs, looked almost benevolently on Jig.
Not only did she lose her horror of him, but she gained an impersonal, detached interest in the workings of his mind. She looked on him not as a man but as a monster in the guise of a man.
"Two deaths," she said quietly, "for your money. You work cheaply,
Arizona."
Jig's criticism seemed to pique him.
"How come?"
"Sandersen's death by your bullet, and mine when I die in the law. Both to your account, Arizona, because you know I'm innocent."
"I know it, but a hunch ain't proof in the eyes of the law. Besides, I don't work so cheap. Sandersen was no good. He ain't worth thinking about. And as for you, Jig, though I don't like to throw it in your face, as a schoolteacher you may be all right, but as a man you ain't worth a damn. Nope. I won't give neither of you a thought—except for Sinclair."