d--next day, I reckon it
was, in the afternoon, just before the inquest--and said could I lend
him five hundred dollars. Well, I knew right away it was a hold-up,
but I couldn't do a thing. I dug up the money an' let him have it."

"Has he bothered you since?"

Hull hesitated. "Well--no."

"Meanin' that he has?"

Hull flew the usual flag of distress, a red bandanna mopping a
perspiring, apoplectic face. "He kinda hinted he wanted more money."

"Did you give it to him?"

"I didn't have it right handy. I stalled."

"That's the trouble with a blackmailer. Give way to him once an' he's
got you in his power," Kirby said. "The thing to do is to tell him
right off the reel to go to Halifax."

"If a fellow can afford to," Olson put in significantly. "When you've
just got through a little private murder of yore own, you ain't exactly
free to tell one of the witnesses against you to go very far."

"Tell you I didn't kill Cunningham," Hull retorted sullenly. "Some one
else must 'a' come in an' did that after I left."

"Sounds reasonable," Olson murmured with heavy sarcasm.

"Was the hall lit when you came out of my uncle's rooms?" Kirby asked
suddenly.

"Yes. I told you Shibo was workin' at one of the windows."

"So Shibo saw you and Mrs. Hull plainly?"

"I ain't denyin' he saw us," Hull replied testily.

"No, you don't deny anything we can prove on you," the Dry Valley man
jeered.

"And Shibo didn't let up on you. He kept annoyin' you afterward," the
cattleman persisted.

"Well, he--I reckon he aims to be reasonable now," Hull said uneasily.

"Why now? What's changed his views?"

The fat man looked again at this brown-faced youngster with the
single-track mind who never quit till he got what he wanted. Why was
he shaking the bones of Shibo's blackmailing. Did he know more than he
had told? It was on the tip of Hull's tongue to tell something more, a
damnatory fact against himself. But he stopped in time. He was in
deep enough water already. He could not afford to tell the dynamic
cattleman anything that would make an enemy of him.

"Well, I reckon he can't get blood from a turnip, as the old sayin'
is," the land agent returned.

Kirby knew that Hull was concealing something material, but he saw he
could not at the present moment wring it from him. He had not, in
point of fact, the faintest idea of what it was. Therefore he could
not lay 'hold of any lever with which to pry it loose.