The dust of the passing horsemen had settled before Totem City crawled out of their holes to see what it was all about. Hashknife and Sleepy ran down to the sheriff’s office and found the sheriff and Sunshine in there viewing the wreckage. For once in his life, Sudden Smithy could not find words to express his feelings.
Both prisoners were gone. The front door of the office sagged on one hinge, and two of the cell doors had been sprung so badly that they would never function again. The sheepmen had left two big crowbars, an ax and ten pounds of dynamite. It was evident that they were prepared for any emergency.
In a few minutes the office was filled with inquiring men. Sudden Smithy finally recovered his powers of speech, and their questions were met by a flow of bitter profanity. Sudden had, at one time, been a muleskinner, and his profane vocabulary was almost inexhaustible. In fact, Sudden was in no condition to talk coherently of what had happened, so Sunshine told them that the sheepmen had smashed the jail and had taken away Eph King and Jack Hartwell.
“Yuh should ’a’ known they’d do that,” said a cowboy.
This was sufficient to send Sudden into paroxysms of profanity, as he congratulated the cowboy on his wisdom.
“Well, we should,” agreed Sunshine, and this caused Sudden to choke on his own words and become silent.
“Jist about how did the sheepmen know that King was here?” asked one of the crowd.
Sudden looked at the speaker for a moment. He remembered that Hashknife and Sleepy had ridden out of town immediately following the locking up of King and Jack Hartwell, and he also remembered that Hashknife had seemed to know too much about the death of the man who had come to Hartwell’s place looking for King. Then Sudden threw up his hand in a signal for silence.
“I’ll tell yuh who told ’em!” he yelled. “The same men I accused of bein’ King’s spies last night.”
Hashknife was almost at his elbow, and between him and the door, looking at a book, which he had picked up from Sudden’s desk, while Sleepy was further back in the room.