“But shown no papers, nor even a badge. You must have some source of authority, I suppose?”
For an instant the man who had given the name of Jackson Dane seemed to hesitate.
“The truth is,” he said, “though likely you won’t believe it, that I lost everything in that hotel fire at Deming, where I was last week; just got out by the skin of my teeth; so that my extra clothing and everything else went up in smoke.”
“Er, waugh!” Nomad gulped.
“You think that is fishy?”
“I didn’t say et!” the trapper apologized. “Et’s jes’ a way I has o’ breathin’ hard, at times.”
“You haven’t any letters which you have received since?” Buffalo Bill questioned.
“Well, yes: just one!”
Jackson Dane pulled out what seemed at first a letter, but was discovered to be an envelope from which the letter was gone; it bore the postmark of Blossom Range, and the date of that very day.