“No,” said De Launay. “When was that?”
“Back in nineteen eight.”
“I was in Algeria then. I’d never heard. But I remember Panamint. He and Jim Banker were partners, weren’t they?”
“They was.” Sucatash looked curiously at De Launay, wondering how a man who was in Algeria came to know so much about these old survivals. “Leastways, I’ve heard tell they was both of them prospectin’ the Esmeraldas a whole lot in them days and hangin’ together. But Panamint struck this soft graft and wouldn’t let Jim in on it, so they broke up the household. You know—or maybe you don’t—that Panamint was finally found dead in a 105 cave in Death Valley and there was talk that Banker followed him there and beefed him, thinkin’ he really had a mine. Nothin’ come of it except to make folks a little dubious about Jim. He never was remarkable for popularity, nohow, so it don’t amount to much.”
“And Snake Murphy: he used to keep the road house at the ford over the river, didn’t he?”
Once more Sucatash, fairly well informed on ancient history himself, eyed De Launay askance.
“Which he might have. That’s before my time, I reckon. I was just bein’ weaned when Louisiana was run out of the country. My old man could tell you all about it. He’s Carter Wallace, of the Lazy Y at Willow Spring.”
“I knew him,” said De Launay.
“You knowed my old man?”
“But maybe he’d not remember me.”