“The hell yuh do! Well, now——”
“Don’t flare up,” said Hashknife. “If you turned Rance McCoy loose, it’s all right with me. I’ve got a pardner, Chuckwalla, and I’d bust any jail on earth to get him out. What you tell me won’t go any further—but I want to know the truth.”
Chuckwalla flung a frying-pan on the stove and came back to face Hashknife.
“I didn’t bust that jail!” he snorted. “Lot of you fools won’t believe me, eh? Well, don’t! I don’t ask yuh to. I want to find Rance McCoy as bad as you do—mebby worse. Now, what do yuh think of that?”
“I believed yuh the first time, Chuckwalla. Now, let me ask you a question. Why did Rance McCoy borrow money from the bank a few days ago?”
“Did he? He never told me. Why, he had money. Didn’t he bust the bank at the Eagle? Shucks, I don’t believe he borrowed money.”
“Did yuh ever know Billy DuMond to have a lot of money?”
“Hell, no! Never got over forty a month since I knowed him.”
“When I found his body,” said Hashknife slowly, “I found a paper in his pocket. It was an I.O.U. for seventy-eight hundred dollars, signed by Angel McCoy.”
“Ha-a-a-aw?” Chuckwalla gawped at Hashknife blankly.