Big Medicine’s right hand went to his face and he drew the back of his hand across his mouth. The lines of his face seemed to deepen.
“I trusted you, Jim,” he said simply.
“You always was a fool,” declared Meline. I might as well spill it all now, Hawkworth. The money you sent me for the past twenty-odd years has been well spent. It has bought me many things.
“You fool, you buried yourself down here in the hills, and gave me your money to invest. Oh, I’ve invested it well”—Meline laughed recklessly. “I’ll admit that I got quite a shock when you sent for twenty thousand dollars.
“But I sent it to you, a whole package of bogus money, and some damn fool held up the stage and stole it. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I intended for the stage to be robbed, but by a different outfit. The package was to come back to me intact, so that none would ever know what it contained.”
“You did this, Jim?” Big Medicine spoke softly, sorrowfully. “We were friends once, Jim. I would have backed you with my life. In all the wide world there was no man I trusted as I did you, and you do this thing to me.”
Big Medicine shook his head slowly, his lips compressed.
“I can’t believe it yet, Jim. I feel that I will awake after a while and find that it is only a dream. Jim Meline, the one man I thought I could trust.”
He shifted his eyes and caught sight of Jack’s pale face with the smear of blood across his lips.
“You are all here,” he said slowly. “Lee Yung, Torres, Jack Hill—well, what is the program? What is this priest doing here?”