“Come out and see us, will yuh?” asked Blaze.
“Sure thing, Nolan; so long.”
Cultus went across the street to the War Dance Saloon, where everybody was trying to decide on just who had robbed the bank. Alden Marsh had gone home, minus his pants, and still a little hazy over it all. But he was sober now.
Cultus tried to find out how Marsh lost his pants, but no one seemed to know. But Cultus did find out that the impression was becoming general that Blaze Nolan had robbed the bank. Not that he had done it alone, because of the missing papers, but that he had either been injured in the explosion and had fallen unconscious outside the door, or that his accomplice had knocked him down and failed to take the sack of money.
“Blaze will be in jail inside of an hour after Buck Gillis gits here,” declared a cowboy. “Unless Blaze is wise enough to hit for the tall hills.”
“And him out on probation,” said another cowboy. “The way they’ll soak him will be plenty.”
Cultus went back to his room, inclined to believe that the cowboy had been right. But Cultus couldn’t shake the feeling that Alden Marsh was mixed up in the deal in some way; either Marsh or the man who had taken Marsh’s pants. And Cultus felt sure that Blaze would not be mixed up in any deal with Alden Marsh. And while Cultus debated the thing in his own mind, Terry Ione, clad in a full suit of robin’s-egg blue, bought drinks for a girl in the War Dance Saloon and wondered what he could use to take egg stain off his pants.
Instead of going after the sheriff, Bad News availed himself of the telegraph, and within less than an hour after the robbery, Buck Gillis received a wire, telling him some of the details and urging him to come at once.
Buck Gillis knew that Kendall Marsh was at the hotel; so he immediately told Kendall Marsh that his Medicine Tree Bank had been robbed. Together they caught a freight train out of there at midnight, and when they got to Medicine Tree they talked with Bad News, after which Marsh swore out a warrant for Blaze Nolan, hired a rig at the livery stable and drove out to the Triangle X.
Bad News was able to recite a fairly good running story of what had happened. He told them of finding Alden Marsh, minus his pants, in the bank, and how they had found Blaze Nolan and the sack of money just outside the door.