She did not rise. “I must know more. What is it? Are they hunting you? What have you done now?” A strong suppressed excitement beat in her pulses.
“It is not what I have done, but what your friends have done. Yesterday I went to exchange West for the ransom money. Most of my men I had to take with me, to guard against foul play. We held the cañon from the flat tops, and everything went all right. The exchange was made. We took the ransom money back to the Cache. I don’t know how it was—whether somebody played me false and sold us, or whether your friend Flatray got loose and his posse stumbled in by accident. But there they were in the Cache when we got back.”
“Yes?” The keenest agitation was in Melissy’s voice.
“They took us by surprise. We fought. Two of my men ran away. Two were shot down. I was alone.”
“And then?”
The devil of torment moved in him. “Then I shot up one of your friend’s outfit, rode away, changed my mind, and went back, shot your friend, and hiked off into the hills with a pack horse loaded with gold.” 337
Out of all this one thing stood out terribly to her. “You shot Jack Flatray—again!”
He laughed. One lie more or less made no difference. “I sure did.”
She had to moisten her lips before she could ask the next question: “You—killed him?”
“No—worse luck!”