“What have you got to say, Marsh?” asked Cultus. “You realise that the game broke against yuh; so yuh might as well talk.”
“What good to talk?” he asked huskily. “I tried to protect my son.”
“And you tried to drive all these cattlemen to the wall; to force them to turn Painted Valley over to you and your sheep.”
“Well? I wanted this valley.”
“You sent yore men to Padre Canyon to kill me.”
Marsh shook his head wearily.
“No, you’re wrong, Collins; I had nothing to do with that.”
“You ordered your men to kill Buck Gillis and kidnap Blaze Nolan.”
Kendall Marsh licked his dry lips, but refused to talk further.
“He wanted to leave us holdin’ the sack,” laughed Hank North. “I’m as bad as the rest of ’em, but I never killed anybody. Not that I wouldn’t; but it never broke right for me to do it. Terry and that drunken kid tried to kill yuh, Collins. Terry was afraid of yuh. He stole yore gray horse down at the Mexican border, and then him and young Marsh burned on the Circle M. They thought it would be funny to start trouble for Mendoza, if you showed up. I dunno if Terry killed that officer down at the border, but I think he did.”