Once more the lamp passed a window in the adjoining building and revealed enough of Hickok’s surroundings to enable him to proceed. He was in a hallway that led to a room in the back and a stair to the story above. Along the corridor next the stairs were tiered barrels of flour, sugar, and pork, but next the outer wall a passage had been left to the room in the rear of the building.
The man from Laramie approached the window near which the men were talking, and, crouching there, could see their heads above the sill clearly outlined against the light of a stable lantern far down the street.
Hickok was wondering how he could raise the window within a foot of the heads of the men without their detecting him, when he discovered that he could hear their whisperings plainly. A pane of glass was gone, and he wondered why they had not heard him.
The first words Hickok distinguished were:
“Of course you’ll have to go through the performance of investigating the case, but don’t ring me in, and Dave was dead drunk all through it.”
“Yes, I’ll have to hold some o’ the boys for witnesses, but I ain’t goin’ in till I think all them that knows anything about it has got away.”
“Say, Rus, do you know what Cody is here for?”
“No; that’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”
“Well, he’s after me first, and Dave, and you, and anybody he can find who is mixed up in this Indian graft. I got a wire from Reynolds to be on my guard.”
The sheriff whistled softly.