"No, it didn't," snapped Threewit. Nobody likes to be dragged out of bed at two a.m., to hear bad news, and the director was merely human. "It makes me tired the way you two fellows shoot off about each other."
"He's a pretty slick proposition," Yeager went on, unmoved. "He hit the high spots back to town so as to have his alibi ready—didn't leave any evidence floating around loose in his room. He must have come up the back way so as to slip in without being noticed by the night clerk. At that he couldn't have reached here more than a few minutes before me."
"Quite a Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?"
"Bet you a week's salary that if we go out to the stables we find one of the horses still wet with sweat from a long run."
"Go you once," retorted Threewit promptly. "Wait just a jiffy till I get more clothes on."
Steve's prediction was verified. White Stockings, one of the fastest mounts in the remuda of the company, had been brought in from a long hard run within the past half-hour. Its flanks were stained with sweat and the marks of the saddle chafed its still moist back.
"You win," admitted Threewit. "But that doesn't prove Harrison was on its back."
"No. Say, what about giving me a week off, Mr. Threewit?"
"What for?"
"I've just taken a notion to travel some. Mebbe I might run acrost those cattle that strayed back to Yarnell's whilst I was sleeping."