“He’s the man!” declared Bloom, with a snap of his lean jaws. “You, an’ you, an’ you,” he turned to indicate three cowboys who were in the office, “will come with me. You can’t refuse the law when you’re called upon. We’re a ‘possey come-and-git-us,’ and we’ve got to overhaul Dunbar and see if he’s got the stolen goods.”
Sim Pierce, strolling toward the hotel from down the street, saw the sheriff and the four cowboys hustling off along the trail. He knew, from the way they rode, that there was something up.
In the office the clerk told him about the robbery of Isaacs, and about Dunbar being suspected.
“It ain’t so!” bellowed Sim Pierce. “That ’er boy is as squar’ a piece o’ furniture as ever come out o’ the fact’ry. I tell ye I won’t b’leeve it.”
“You’re not the only one who won’t believe it, Sim,” came a quiet voice behind Pierce, and he turned to meet the indignant, boyish face of Jordan, the sky pilot. “We’ll wait till Bloom and his posse get back, though, before we express ourselves too strongly. I’ve a notion”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“that this may be a part of Lige Benner’s plot. We’ll see, Sim, we’ll see.”
It was two hours later that the “possey come-and-git-us” loped back to town. They brought Nate Dunbar with them, and Nate’s hands were in manacles.
They had found the missing diamonds in his saddlebags. Nate didn’t know how they had got there, but he did know that the first he saw of them was when the sheriff pulled them out of the bags.
Although burning with indignation, Jordan, the sky pilot, kept in the background.
“Sim,” said he to Pierce, “get a fresh horse and ride for the Star-A ranch as fast as you can go. Don’t tell Hattie anything about this, but tell Buffalo Bill and his pards. I’ll do nothing here until I can have a talk with the scout. He’s the one to handle this, and the only one!”
So, while Sim Pierce raced through the night, and Jerry Benner rode slowly and exultantly in the direction of the Circle-B ranch, Nate Dunbar sat helpless in the shanty which served for the Hackamore jail. The young rancher was so dazed by recent events that he could not think.