“Remains to be seen, as the undertaker said when the hearse team ran away and smashed the casket. What would old Rance have in his house that anybody around here would want, Slim?”
“The express loot,” quickly.
“Mebby you’re right.”
“But where’s old Rance?”
“Don’t ask me. Yuh goin’ to be around here this evenin’?”
“Right here—why?”
“Oh, I might get an idea between now and dark, Slim. See yuh later. Oh, yeah; if there’s a telegram comes to yuh—somethin’ yuh don’t know a thing about, just hang onto it, will yuh? I signed yore name to one I sent today.”
“Sure, I will.”
Hashknife found Sleepy at the Red Arrow with Chuck Ring, Scotty McKay, Dell Blackwell, and Boomer Weed. The two men from the Half-Box R had absorbed plenty of liquor, but were not parading their valor.
“I pulled out because I was scared,” confessed Dell. “Mebby somebody mistook old Ed Corby for somebody else, but we don’t know who that somebody else was. Me and old Boomer wasn’t in what you’d call a dyin’ mood; so we jist asked for our time. Yuh can’t blame us, can yuh?”