“Yeah, I’ll do that, too,” agreed Sleepy, suiting his action to the word. “But,” he added, looking across the body of the wounded man, “don’t think you’ve got all the brains, Hashknife—nor a big part of ’em. I never did see a tall man what had any too much sabe. Caesar was a short man, and Napoleon was small and——”
“And look what happened to Napoleon,” grinned Hashknife. “They pastured him on an island all alone.”
“How about Caesar, eh?”
“I dunno a —— thing about him,” admitted Hashknife. “What happened to him, Sleepy?”
“I dunno f’r sure, but—betcha forty dollars that’s the Tombstone Ranch.”
They rode around the point of a hill and below them was a ranchhouse, sprawled in a clump of cottonwoods. A long feed-shed, its roof twisted out of a straight line, stretched from a series of pole corrals along the bank of a willow-grown stream.
A thin streamer of smoke was drifting from the crooked stove-pipe. Between the gate and the ranch-house the ground was dotted with white slabs, seemingly laid out in orderly rows.
“That’s her,” agreed Hashknife. “Graveyard and all.”
They rode down to the gate and up past the graveyard to the front door. There was no sign of an inhabitant, until Hashknife dismounted and started for the door, when the door was suddenly flung open and Hashknife faced the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. The man behind the gun was as gray as a rabbit, slightly stooped and with a face as hard as chiseled granite.