e he was bleeding to
death and brought him in."

"That's what I heard say. Kinder queer, ain't it, you happened to be the
man that found him?"

"Nothing queer about it. I was riding in from Seven-Mile Creek Camp."
Gordon was exasperated, but not at all alarmed.

"So you was. While you was out at the camp, you asked one of the boys
how big the pay-roll would be."

"Does that prove I was planning a hold-up? Isn't that the last thing I
would have asked if I had intended robbery?"

"Don't ask me. I ain't no psychologist. All I know is you took an
interest in the bank-roll on the way."

"I'm here for the Government investigating Macdonald. I was getting
information--earning my pay. Can you understand that?"

Gopher chewed his cud impassively. "Sure I can, and I been earning mine.
By the way, howcome you to be beat up so bad, Mr. Elliot?"

"I had a fight with the robbers."

"Sure it wasn't with the robbed. That split lip of yours looks to me
plumb like Mac's John Hancock."

Elliot flushed angrily. "Of course if you intend to believe me
guilty--"

"Now, there ain't no manner o' use in gettin' het up, young fellow.
Mebbe you did it; mebbe you didn't. Anyhow, you'll gimme that gat you
been toting these last few days."

Gordon's hand moved toward his hip. Then he remembered.

"I haven't it. I left it--"

"You left it at the ford--with one shell empty. That's where you left
it," interrupted the officer.

"Yes. I fired at Northrup as he rushed me."

"Um-hu," assented Jones, impudent unbelief in his eye. "At Northrup or
at Macdonald."

"What do you think I did with the money, then? Did I eat it?"

"Not so you could notice it. Since you put it to me flat-foot, you gave
it to your pardners. You didn't want it. They did. They have got the
horse too--and they're hitting the high spots to make their get-away."

Elliot was locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was
furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his
anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had
done such a thing. And Sheba--would she accept as true this weight of
circumstantial evidence that was piling up against him?

It could all be explained so easily. And yet--the facts fitted like
links of a chain to condemn him. He went over them one by one. The
babbling tongue of Selfridge that had made common gossip of the
impending tragedy in which he and Macdonald were the principals--his
purchase