"Let it go for now," broke in Sam Larder. "We've got to think of our skins. And if we don't catch Bill Wingo, they'll be gone skins."
"You bet they will," said the district attorney. "That man at large is a menace. He'd bushwhack any or all of us three without a moment's hesitation. He's—he's capable of anything."
"I know he's capable of anything," Sam Larder said with deep feeling, thinking of Billy's escape from the Larder ranch house. "And I'd give a good deal to know he was two feet underground. But Gawd knows we can't do more than we have done to catch him. Felix and me have ridden ourselves bowlegged combin' the Medicines for him."
"You bet we have," agreed Felix. "There ain't a square foot of those mountains we don't know intimate. Speaking personal, I've ridden—" He paused and looked across at Sam Larder. "That bet was I'd ride more than six hundred miles in sixty days. Remember, Sam? And the sixty days ain't up yet, and I've ridden more than six hundred already."
"What bet's that?" asked the district attorney chattily, anxious to reëstablish friendly relations. "Who you bettin' with?"
"Nobody you're interested in," parried Felix Craft, it having been thought better to keep the district attorney in the dark regarding the happenings at the Larder ranch house on the day of the stage hold-up.
"I'll go the limit we've covered a thousand miles," groaned Sam. "I've lost thirty pounds myself. I don't believe Bill ever went near the Medicines."
"Oh, he went there, all right," said the district attorney. "Take my word——"
A pounding on the office door cut the sentence in half.
"You are certainly jumpy this evening, Rale," Felix Craft said dryly. "Open the door. Maybe it's our friend Bill."