“I think it will be better, if you do,” said Benson, who had lied in saying he had seen the Betts brothers in the town; the truth being he had not seen them there or anywhere else recently, though he knew who they were, and feared them almost as much as he did Buffalo Bill.
“I put a knife into the superintendent of the Goliath Mine, at Soda Springs,” Gorilla Jake explained. “Hard luck had me by the throat, and I was tryin’ to git the cash that was in the safe at the mine office. The superintendent was in the office, and we come together. He gripped me; and to git free I knifed him. It was only ten days ago. The thing made me pick up my feet and git out o’ that in a hurry. A reward was offered fer me alive er dead, by the mine directors, and it put the Bettses hot on my trail; but I thought I had shook ’em off.”
Benson concealed the feeling of satisfaction which this gave him.
“You won’t dare to go into the town now, at any rate,” he said.
“No, I reckon not.”
“And Buffalo Bill will help the Bettses, of course.”
“He allus does,” Gorilla Jake admitted, “when they happen ter be workin’ in the same territory.”
“So it looks to me that the best thing we can do is to join forces. And since you’ve told me about those tablets, and that you intended to go to the Utes, an idea has come to me.”
“I was goin’ to sell the stuff to the Utes; but I’ve got to have whisky as a basis, to soak the things up in; that’s why I was goin’ into Blossom Range—to git the whisky. Can’t do nothin’ without it. I doctor the whisky with the tablets. A red jest naturally likes the stuff, anyway; put that dope into it, and you couldn’t pry him away from it with a crowbar. He’ll trade everything he’s got fer it. I’ve heard them Utes have got some gold dust, and I know they’ve got furs and pelts. So that was my lay. I thought I’d be safe there for a time, and that maybe the Bettses would git tired, or lose the trail.”