"Look here, youngster, I've seen you before, and I remember you now. When I saw you once at Holy Cross you had two eyes in your head, and you weren't a cripple."
Suddenly Jim snatched away the black pad which was slung over Crook's disabled eye. Two good eyes shone out, and over one of them the scar of an old wound. Jim laughed at that, but Crook forgot to be lame, starting back lithe as a panther and his face dead white.
"Be careful!" he whispered, "there's men passing us! My life ain't worth a cent if I'm seen heah in town." He had the sling across his eye again and broke out laughing. "I mean the doctor says I got to keep it covered, or I'll go blind—and a blind man's life ain't worth one cent in the dollar."
"Quit lying! You're posted at the stable to see who comes and goes, one eye in a sling and one game leg for disguise. Come here!"
Jim dragged him by the scruff of the neck to the post office, which stood next door to the saloon, with only the alley between, and there was an old poster notice on the wall:—
"NOTICE.
"The Northern Pacific and Wells Fargo Express Companies offer ($2,000) two thousand dollars,
DEAD OR ALIVE,
for the four robbers who held up the Northern Pacific Express train at Gold Creek, Deer Lodge County, Montana, on the morning of April 3rd, 1899. Descriptions:—
"Peter, alias Bobby Stark, alias Curly McCalmont, supposed to be son of Captain McCalmont, is five feet six inches in height, slim, fair hair, blue eyes, clean-shaven, soft girlish manner, with a scar over left eye, the result of a knife wound. He is about twenty years of age, but looks not more than fifteen, and was formerly a cowboy, riding for the Holy Cross Outfit in Arizona. He was last seen on or about May 5th, at Clay Flat, in the Painted Desert, with a flea-bitten grey gelding branded x on the near stifle, and two led burros, one of them packed."
Jim turned round sharp on Crook. "You're Curly McCalmont!" says he.
"Come away—yo' risking my neck."
"Do you think I'd sell you for that dirty money?"
"What you seen, others may, and they'd act haidstrong."