"Well?"
Bill carefully refolded the handkerchief, and laid it beside his medicine chest.
Kars emitted a sound like a chuckle,
"Oh, it was a bully play," he said. Then, after a moment: "Listen, I'll tell it from the start."
Kars talked, with occasional pauses, for nearly half an hour. He detailed the events of the night in the barest outline, and only dealt closely with the fact of the gold workings. These he explained with the technicalities necessary between experts. He dwelt upon his estimate of the quality of the auriferous deposits as he had been able to make it in the darkness, and from his sense of touch. The final story of his encounter with Louis Creal only seemed to afford him amusement in the telling.
"You see, Bill," he added, "that feller must have been sick to death. I mean finding himself with just the squaws and the fossils left around when we come along. His play was clear as daylight. He tried to scare us like a brace of rabbits to be quit of us. It was our bull-headed luck to hit the place right when we did. I mean finding the neches out on a trail of murder instead of lying around their teepees."
"Yes. But we're going to get them on our trail anyway."
"Sure we are—when he's rounded 'em up."
Bill produced his timepiece and studied it reflectively.
"It's an hour past midnight," he said. "We'll need to be on the move with daylight. We best hand them all the mileage we can make. We've got to act bright."