Brick laughed at him—with his mouth; the rest of his face tensed, serious. The crowd shifted audibly.
“Mebbe yuh don’t get the drift of it, Leach,” said Brick. “I’ll start a little further back in hist’ry and give yuh a chance to foller me.
“It began in Idaho.”
Leach jerked slightly and his eyes flashed to Hank Stagg, who was slouched at the bar, looking down at the floor. Hank had stopped crying now and his thumbs were hooked over his cartridge-belt.
“Some folks got to understand each other—in Idaho,” continued Brick. “One of ’em came to Sun Dog and got in kinda solid. He made money, I reckon. But all the time he was lookin’ for bigger money; so he got them Idaho folks to migrate down here, and they formed kind of a little corporation to loot Sun Dog.
“It sure worked, too. But they got scared of the sheriff’s office. The big haul wasn’t pulled yet, and they wanted to keep me quiet until that was cinched; so they imported a detective to handle the mystery.”
Every eye in the place flashed to Santel, but he never moved. His eyes were watching Leach. Even Brick’s statement did not seem to impress him.
“They got him in Idaho, too,” said Brick softly. “He was known as a killer in that country. There’s prob’ly several sheriffs up there that would like to put handcuffs on him.”
But even the direct accusation did not affect Santel. Men moved away from him, but he remained as immovable as a statue.
“I kinda blame myself for Soapy Caswell gettin’ shot,” said Brick. “Yuh see, I lied about that hold-up. I told ’em down here that Soapy got through to the Red Hill mine with the twenty-seven-thousand-dollar payroll, when I knew better.