Hashknife paused to let this soak in.
‘You mean, there was somebody else down there?’ asked Lem hoarsely.
‘A masked man,’ said Hashknife. ‘He choked Briggs to death with the rope, and then brought them two kids out to the south mesa, where he left ’em. I found ’em down there, all fagged out, and brought ’em home.’
‘What masked man?’ demanded Dave Morgan. ‘Talk sense.’
‘The man who shot Rex Morgan’s horse last night. The same man who shot Noah Evans on the porch of the Lane ranch-house, Morgan; shot him, thinkin’ it was the tenderfoot kid. The same man who fired a shot through the window at the Lane ranch-house last night, and almost killed Sleepy Stevens.’
‘There’s been quite a lot goin’ on around here, it seems to me,’ said Joe Cave, laughing shortly.
‘But yore explanation don’t tell us anythin’,’ said Dave Morgan, stepping away from the table.
‘It told me quite a lot,’ said Hashknife. ‘But there’s more to it than that, folks. Did any of yuh examine the spot where yuh thought Peter Morgan was killed? Well, yuh might ’a’ been surprised. There wasn’t any blood spilled there. Peter Morgan was dead long before he came to that place.[’]
‘And the man, or men, who brought him there, killed him in the 6X6 ranch-house on a Navajo rug, which has a lightnin’ mark on it. To remove the blood, they took rug and all with ’em.[’]
‘And when they was gettin’ away, that tenderfoot kid rode in on ’em, and they popped him over the head. They thought they had killed him, and took him along to the Lane ranch. They sunk the rug in the creek. And when they knew we had found the rug—they stole it.’