“Gawd,” said Bad News piously, “what a mess!”
“I plumb forgot to find out who stole my gray horse,” said Cultus, as though coming out of a dream. “I reckon it was Terry Ione again. He was the newcomer at the Triangle X. And those drugs they used to keep Blaze Nolan down look suspiciously like the packages they smuggled across the border. He probably had a lot of it with him, when he took my horse, and it came in handy to dope Blaze. It was Terry and young Marsh who tried to bush me last night. They tried it at Padre Canyon, accordin’ to Della, and I suppose they were makin’ another try last night.”
“But I don’t understand how yuh ever suspicioned that Blaze was at the Triangle X. Why, I was sure Blaze killed the sheriff.”
“It shore looked thataway—except for one thing. Those fools tried to improve on the evidence against Blaze.”
“What was that?”
“The handcuff on Buck Gillis’s wrist. Would any sheriff lock himself to a prisoner, with both of them on horseback?”
Bad News blinked rapidly for several moments.
“That’s right! Why, he wouldn’t, would he? I never thought of it. Why, that would be a crazy thing to do!”
“Yeah, and, anyway, there was enough to point one to the Triangle X as a likely place to look for the answer to almost any criminal goings on. I was sure that forty-one bullets killed Ben Kelton, and at the time of Kelton’s death the only forty-one gun round here was at the Triangle X ranch, according to Jules Mendoza, so I was pretty satisfied that it had been a Triangle X ranny who killed Kelton—Hank North must have sold that forty-one gun to Alden, and I figure that the place that held the killer of Kelton would be a fairly likely place to look for some news of Blaze Nolan’s disappearance and Buck Gillis’s death.”
They finished their meal and went outside. There was still a big crowd around the War Dance, but Cultus evaded them and went over to the store. He didn’t know that the Kelton family were there with Blaze. The effects of the drug had worn off, and he realised how long he had been a captive at the Triangle X.