"And yet you imagine that Nick Undrell knew how to use it, or get hold of a dose of it, even if he knew! Why, I don't figure that Nick ever heard the name of the stuff—not havin' been in hospital, like Sanson T. Wrangler. If you ask me, Isa, I don't believe there was any chloroform within a day's ride of Laramie on Sunday evening. Just put your wits to work, my friend. To begin with, Sanson T.'s wife and daughter were away in St. Louis. That was real convenient. Then the money disappeared from the thief-proof safe just at the time when it was to have been paid up to clear off the debt—that was equally convenient. I'm told that the thieves attacked him when Sanson opened the door to go out to meeting. But did any one ever know a respectable citizen go out to meeting with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and without his hat? Or would he go out leaving the key of the safe on the open desk table? Then the stupefying effects of chloroform would not certainly last more than an hour, although the sickly smell of the drug would linger about the closed room for quite twelve."
"Say, Kiddie," Rube interrupted, "you've gotten on this yer crime problem the same's you'd track a wild critter in the woods. Seems ter me, you've run that critter right into its lair. All you've been sayin's as clear's the water in the lake. I c'n see the bottom plain, an' I figure it up as thar wasn't no burglary at all, thar wasn't no masked men or chloroform. Sanson T. Wrangler made the whole thing up ter cover his own tracks, an' the only thief in the case was Sanson T. Wrangler hisself."
"Exactly," nodded Kiddie.
"Shake!" cried Isa Blagg, thrusting out his hand. "You're sure right, Kiddie; plumb right, you are. You've gotten straight's a die to the very innards of the problem. The hull evidence supports your theory. Here's me, a perfessional lawyer, so ter speak, bin puzzlin' my head over that alleged crime f'r days on end, an' never c'd make top nor tail of it; an' you, settin' idle at this yer camp fire, have solved it as easy an' as slick 's you might cipher out a sum in simple arithmetic."
Kiddie shrugged his shoulders.
"It's merely the application of common sense to a very ordinary proposition," he said.
"Kiddie don't jump at no rash conclusions," observed Rube Carter. "Trainin' in scout-craft has sharpened his wits at ev'ry point. He follers th' evidence of a crime same 's he'd foller on the tracks of a wild critter of the woods."
"Exactly," Kiddie nodded. "There's no difference."
"He looks at a thing all round an' through an' through 'fore he fixes up his mind about it," Rube went on, addressing the sheriff. "You an' me, Isa, we ain't built the same 's Kiddie. We ain't so slick or so clever at analysin'. Because a galoot like this yer Sanson T. Wrangler happens along an' says he's bin robbed, you never waits t' inquire if he's tellin' the truth. You dash off on a false trail t' arrest a innercent man. Kiddie has a way o' workin' that's all his own, an' if he don't allus hit the bull's-eye fust shot, at least he never misses the target."
"I allow Kiddie's cute," acknowledged Isa. "He's got the sagacity of a Injun combined with the trained intelligence of a civilized human. If Kiddie wasn't so all-fired scrupulous about truth an' justice, he'd make a passable magistrate. But I reckon his ambitions don't lie in that direction."