"That so? Well, I ain't sayin' that I'd refuse, but I ain't doin' this as no favor, either, you understand. I'm doin' it because it's the law, the good old-fashioned, honest to Gawd, s'help me die, law!"
"That's the kind we want here—that, or no kind. So long, Steve!"
With a nod of relief, Trowbridge left the jail, well-satisfied that he had done a good turn for Wade, and pleased with himself for having lived so well up to the standards set by the detectives of popular fiction. Since Bailey had not had time to reach the railroad, his arrest was now almost a certainty, and once he was back in Crawling Water, a bucket of hot tar and a bundle of feathers, with a promise of immunity for himself, would doubtless be sufficient to extract a confession from him which would implicate Rexhill and Moran.
Feeling that he had earned the refreshment of a drink, the cattleman was about to enter the hotel when, to his consternation, he saw tearing madly down the street toward him Bill Santry, on a horse that had evidently been ridden to the very last spurt of endurance. He ran forward at once, for the appearance of the old man in Crawling Water, with a warrant for murder hanging over his head, could only mean that some tragedy had happened at the ranch.
"Hello, Lem!" Santry greeted him. "You're just the man I'm lookin' for."
"What's the trouble?" Trowbridge demanded.
"The boy!" The old plainsman slid from his horse, which could hardly keep its feet, but was scarcely more spent in body than its rider was in nerve. His face was twitching in a way that might have been ludicrous but for its significance. "They've ambushed him, I reckon. I come straight in after you, knowin' that you'd have a cooler head for this here thing than—than I have."
"My God!" The exclamation shot from Trowbridge like the crack of a gun. "How did it happen?"
Santry explained the details, in so far as he knew them, in a few breathless sentences. The old man was clearly almost beside himself with grief and rage, and past the capacity to act intelligently upon his own initiative. He had not been satisfied, he said, to remain behind at the ranch and let Wade go to the timber tract alone, and so after a period of indecision he had followed him. Near the edge of the timber he had come upon Wade's riderless horse, trailing broken bridle reins. He had followed the animal's tracks back to the point of the assault, but there was no sign of Wade, which fact indicated that he had been carried away by those who had overcome him.
"I could see by the tracks that there was a number of 'em; as many as five or six," the old man summed up. "I followed their sign as far as I could, but I lost it at the creek. Then I went back to the house and sent some of the boys out to scout around before I come down here after you."