“He’s the one,” said Wild Bill to himself, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and getting out of his chair. “The chap doesn’t look much like an easy mark, though. I wonder if he has any notion he’s taking long chances with that hundred thousand of his?”
Just then Wild Bill experienced something like a jolt. A man rode up along the trail that led from the cañon bottom, drew rein in front of the hotel, dismounted, dropped his bridle-reins over a hitching-post, and followed the stranger into the Lucky Strike.
The man had his right arm in a sling, and it didn’t take two looks to inform Wild Bill that the fellow was none other than Clancy! Clancy, the man who had been blowing gold into the Forty Thieves with a shotgun! Clancy, the man Wild Bill had left, with four others, bottled up in the Forty Thieves’ shaft!
Clancy did not pay any attention to Wild Bill. It seemed very probable that neither Clancy, nor any of those with him in the mine, had been able to see Wild Bill distinctly enough to recognize him in another place and in broad day.
Then, too, the Laramie man had a new shirt of a different color from the blue one he had worn in the mine, and he showed no sign of injury. All this would help to keep Clancy from recognizing him, even if he had got a tolerably good look at him in the Forty Thieves.
Reassured on this point, Wild Bill fell to canvassing another. How had Clancy managed to escape from the shaft?
Clancy and the rest must have had help. Some other member of the gang must have been abroad in the cañon, and no doubt happened along and gave his aid.
Wild Bill was disappointed. He had hoped the five would be kept in the Forty Thieves until Buffalo Bill reached Sun Dance.
Strolling into the office of the hotel, Wild Bill saw Clancy in close conversation with the man in the linen duster. They were off by themselves in one corner, and were conversing in low, animated tones.
“Clancy is going to hold the man until this Captain Lawless shows up,” thought Wild Bill. “I must have a word with that tenderfoot and show him how he is going to be gold-bricked. I’d hate myself to death if I ever allowed that gang of robbers to get away with his hundred thousand.”