Rale shook off the restraining hand. "I don't know exactly where he is," he said coldly, "but I'm reasonably sure he's round here somewhere. Good Gawd, man, don't you suppose if I knew where he was, I'd have him dumped so quick his hair would curl?"
Jack Murray nodded. "He's round here all right, unless he's gone north beyond the West Fork. I cut his trail at Dorothy."
"Was he there?"
"Considerable. Yeah, him and another feller were there. Between 'em they caught Slike."
"Were you with Slike?"
"Not at the time he was caught, I wasn't. But a while before that I met him in Shadyside and I told him what Skinny Shindle wrote about the Horseshoe outfit needin' gunfighters. Slike, he didn't want to leave the country yet, anyway, and we decided to throw in with the Horseshoe a spell."
"But how did Bill——"
"Trailed us, I suppose. First thing I knew, here we found Skinny dead as Julius Cæsar alongside Fenley's Creek, and Slike he'd disappeared complete. There'd been a brush, and Shindle and a TU puncher had cashed."
"And where were you during the—brush?"
"I was on the other side of the range with a couple of the Horseshoe bunch payin' a visit to a nester. If I'd been with Slike and Skinny, the deal would have turned out different, and you can stick a pin in that."