“But you said it was Nate, you fellows,” put in the scout, “and that’s where you were wrong.”
“I’ll believe it when you prove it,” said Phelps, with a glaring look at Dunbar.
“Hist!” breathed the doctor.
All eyes turned to Red Steve. He was staring upward into the doctor’s face. It was plain to every one that he had not many minutes to live—perhaps not many seconds.
“Steve!” called Lige Benner, bending down. “Don’t you know me?”
“Share I know ye,” was the gruff response—as gruff, at least, as a feeble voice could make it.
“Tell these people,” went on Benner, “who it was shot Ace Hawkins!”
“It won’t do me any hurt ter tell that, I reckon,” answered Red Steve stumblingly. “Ye got it out o’ me at the ranch, Benner, an’ ye turned me adrift. It was yer fiend of a brother that put me up ter it. Jerry Benner said fer me ter do it. He didn’t think Hawkins was actin’ right, Jerry didn’t. He thought Hawkins was playin’ double with him an’ Lige. Lige said he wouldn’t stand fer no shootin’, but Jerry says fer me ter go ahead an’ never mind Lige. So I did, an’ it was me bored Hawkins.”
“And I didn’t have a thing to do with it?” demanded Benner.
“Nary a thing. Ye didn’t know it was done till ye found it out from Jerry. Then ye fired me. I expected ye would send me ter Hackamore, an’ hey me put in the lockup, an’ tried, so I hoofed it away from ther Circle-B. Then—then I met that ther horned killer in the road. I was on foot an’ couldn’t git away. He come at me—an’ right thar’s whar I got my gruel. I heered some’un in the trail behind me, an’ I was afeared it mout be some’un chasin’ arter me, so I crawled inter the gully, an’ ter this place.”