“Yes, that’s all right, for him!” remarked a certain Wise One of the camp. “But I don’t go no yarn of that kind. Why, see here, how long’s it been sence Juniper Joe was digging in that hole back of his cabin, and shipping stuff he claimed he got there? Not ten days, has it? Then it was found out that Juniper Joe was doin’ the road-agent act big, and the stuff he shipped he had stole. He’s in the jail right here in this camp now, for that, ain’t he?”
“Then you think this new feller is playin’ the same game?” was asked.
“I’m not saying,” said the Wise One. “But see here: night before last a bullion stage was held up and the cash box emptied by agents. The Wells Fargo wouldn’t take the risk of that shipment, but it was sent by other parties, and the road agents got it. Does any one know who them road agents are?”
No one knew; or, at least, no one was willing to admit that he knew.
“Put two and two together and they make four, don’t they—or do they make five?” said the Wise One. “But remember, I ain’t making no charges against anybody.”
“So you think——”
“No, I don’t think anything; I’m jest trying to make you think.”
The words of the Wise One went flying round town. So that more people visited the tenderfoot’s cabin, to take a look at the tall man with the blond mustache and the long hair; all of whom he greeted genially, and some of whom he showed his “process,” so much, at least, as he wished to show; and he told them about it in words that were more wonderful than any they had ever seen in print.
But the universal judgment was that this party could not be Tim Benson, who was a small man—so small that he had successfully played the rôle of a woman. Neither could he be Juniper Joe, as Juniper Joe was at that blessed moment immured tightly within the walls of the jail at Blossom Range.
Who was the stranger?