“Seems to me I've heard of you, Haines.”
“Maybe.”
Gregg looked at the big man narrowly, and then swung back towards Dan. He knew many things, now. Lee Haines—yes, that was the name. One of the crew who followed Jim Silent; and Dan Barry? What a fool he had been not to remember! It was Dan Barry who had gone on the trail of Silent's gang and hounded it to death; Lee Haines alone had been spared. Yes, half a dozen years before the mountain-folk had heard that story, a wild and improbable one. It fitted in with what Pete Glass had told him of the shooting of Harry Fisher; it explained a great deal which had mystified him since he first met Barry; it made the thing he had come to do at once easier and harder.
“I s'pose Molly showed a clean pair of heels to the whole lot of 'em?” he said to Dan.
“She's dead.”
“Dead?” His astonishment was well enough affected. “God amighty, Dan, not Grey Molly—my hoss?”
“Dead. I shot her.”
Vic gasped. “You?”
“They'd busted her leg. I put her out of pain.”
Gregg dropped into a chair. It was not altogether an affectation, not altogether a piece of skilful acting now, for though the sheriff had told him all that happened he had not had a chance to feel the truth; but now it swept over him, all her tricks, all her deviltry, all that long companionship. His head bowed.