“They’ve got ’em. Caught them on Dry Creek, just below Green Forks.”
Helen Messiter, just finishing her breakfast at the hotel preparatory to leaving in her machine for the ranch, laid down her knife and fork and looked with dilated eyes at Denver, who had broken in with the news.
“Are you sure?” The color had washed from her face and left her very white, but she fronted the situation quietly without hysterics or fuss of any kind.
“Yes, ma’am. They’re bringing them in now to jail. Watch out and y’u’ll see them pass here in a few minutes. Seems that Bannister’s wound opened up on him and he couldn’t go any farther. Course Mac wouldn’t leave him. Sheriff Burns and his posse dropped in on them and had them covered before Mac could chirp.”
“You are sure this man—this desperado Bannister—will do nothing till night?”
“Not the way I figure it. He’ll have the jail watched all day. But he’s got to work the town up to a lynching. I expect the bars will be free for all to-day. By night the worst part of this town will be ready for anything. The rest of the citizens are going to sit down and do nothing just because it is Bannister.”
“But it isn’t Bannister—not the Bannister they think it is.”
He shook his head. “No use, ma’am. I’ve talked till my throat aches, but it don’t do a mite of good. Nobody believes a word of what I say. Y’u see, we ain’t got any proof.”
“Proof! We have enough, God knows! didn’t this villain—this outlaw that calls himself Jack Holloway—attack and try to murder him?”
“That’s what we believe, but the report out is that one of us punchers shot him up for crossing the dead-line.”