“Well, I’ll be bust!” he snorted. “Let me get this straight.”
He repeated what Honey had told him, making a few mistakes, which Honey rectified.
“But who killed him?” he demanded.
“We don’t know, Ben.”
“Well, I’ll be damned! All right, I’ll tell him.”
Ben spurred his horse to a gallop and was soon out of sight.
“They’ll have to come through this way to get him, won’t they?” asked Hashknife.
“Unless they want to carry the body across the railroad bridge. Good gosh, things look worse for Joe Rich every day! I suppose he ran into the brakeman, eh?”
“Probably,” nodded Hashknife. “Of course he might have fell off the track that night. The wind was awful. If he struck his head on the rocks and slid into the water he’d die pretty quick. We’ll have to wait until they take him out.”
But they didn’t have to wait long. Inside an hour Kelsey, Ralston, Ben Collins and Abe Liston of the 3W3, rode in at the HJ. No one had told Peggy and Laura about the dead man, and their curiosity was aroused by the advent of the sheriff and his men.