"Some one cut the rope and freed him," he said, confounded at the impossibility of the thing that had occurred.
"Must of slipped his hands out of the cuffs, looks like," the guard suggested.
"He got me to give him a bigger size—complained they chafed his wrists."
"Some trick that, if he has got kid hands."
The chill eyes of Goodheart gimleted into those of his assistant. "Did you do this, Brad? God help you if you did."
A light step sounded on the threshold. Pauline came into the room. "I did it, Jack," she said.
"You!"
"I came up through the trapdoor when I was in the cellar. I cut the rope and told him there was a horse saddled in the aspens."
Thoughts raced in his bewildered mind. She had planned all this carefully. Almost under his very eyes she had done it. Then she had lured him from the house to give Clanton a better chance. She had let him make love to her so that she could keep him at the corral while the prisoner escaped. It was all a trick. Even now she was laughing up her sleeve at the way she had made a fool of him.
"You saddled the horse and left it there." His statement was a question, too.