“Bob, you must go to bed. You’re tired out,” his cousin told him.
“I ain’t, either,” he denied indignantly. “Tired nothing. I’m going with you.”
Curly caught Kate’s glance, and she left the boy to him.
“Look here, Bob. We’re at the beginning of a big job. Some of us have to keep fresh all the time. We’ll work in relays. To-night you sleep so as to be ready to-morrow.”
This way of putting it satisfied the boy. He reluctantly consented to go to bed, and was sound asleep almost as soon as his head struck the pillow.
At the office of the sheriff, Kate cut to essentials as soon as introductions were over.
“Do you think my father robbed the W. & S. Express Company, Mr. Bolt?” she asked.
Her plainness embarrassed the officer.
“Let’s took at the facts, Miss Cullison,” he began amiably. “Then you tell me what you would think in my place. Your father needed money mighty bad. There’s no doubt at all about that. Here’s an envelope on which he had written a list of his debts. You’ll notice they run to just a little more than twenty thousand. I found this in his bedroom the day he disappeared.”
She took the paper, glanced at it mechanically, and looked at the sheriff again. “Well? Everybody wants money. Do they all steal it?”