The trail was warm now, as he thought, but—if he were too late? He put the thought from him, turning to the perusal of a telegram in code which he had found waiting for him at the desk; translated, it read:
“With you Thursday with four, six, twenty-one, and the others. Look for thirty-three.
“CHILDERS.”
But there was no time to be lost. Thursday was tomorrow. He would have to take his chance of their finding him, for there was nobody whom he could trust. Ellison had gone, even if he might have chanced the giant in so delicate a matter; Del Kane, likewise. He must take his chance. Striding to the door, he stiffened abruptly at a drumming rap, and a hoarse voice in the corridor without:
“Open up in there; open up!”
Annister, a pulse in his temple beating to his hard-held breath, jerked back the door, to face—
Bristow, behind him three men whom he recognized as hangers-on at the hotel bar. They had something of the look of long-riders, villainous, hard-bitten; as one man, they grinned now, but without mirth, as the sheriff spoke:
“Annister—I arrest you for the murder of Tucson Charlie Westervelt and Bartley Pattison. In th’ name of th’ Law!”
Annister knew that if he resisted they would shoot him down; in fact, he knew, too, that was what they wanted; it would be the easiest way. Under the menace of the guns, he spread his hands, palms downward, preceding the four men down the stairs outward to the jail.
But as the heavy door clanged shut behind him, Annister, his gaze in a sightless staring into the north, groaned, in bitterness of spirit.