something. He was particularly anxious
the John Cross shouldn't hear of it until after your preliminary.
Undue influence and all that."

"Frame up my foot! I didn't kill that man and I reckon I can prove it
if I have any chance to know what evidence they're going to bring
against me." Again that angry spot glowed on the clear olive of his
cheek. "How can I study it over when I don't know what's happened or
what is said to have happened? I'll have to go to trial in the
dark--no chance to cipher on what's what, like I would if I had a
chance to thresh it out with my friends."

"Well," said Gwinne gently, "what's the matter with me?"

"So that's all?" said Gwinne, after Dines had told his story. "Sure of
it?"

"Absolutely. He rode up while I was branding my long-ear. He gave me a
letter to mail and gassed while he smoked a cig, and wandered back the
way he came, while I oozed away down the canyon. No more, no less. Said
he was prospecting, he did--or did he?" Johnny reflected; remembering
then that Forbes in giving him a letter to mail had mentioned location
notices. "Yes, he did."

With the words another memory came into his mind, of the trouble with
Jody Weir on day herd--about another letter, that was. This memory--so
Johnny assured himself--flashed up now because Weir was one of his
five accusers. No--there were only three accusers, as he understood it
from the talk of the night before; three accusers, five to arrest him.
Yet only one had come actually to make the arrest. Queer!

"Now," said Johnny, "it's your turn."

He curled a cigarette and listened. Early in the recital he rubbed his
nose to stimulate thought; but later developments caused him to
transfer that attention to his neck, which he stroked with caressing
solicitude. Once he interrupted.

"I never stole a calf in a bare open hillside, right beside a wagon
road, never in my whole life," he protested indignantly. "As an
experienced man, does that look reasonable to you?"

"No, it don't," said Gwinne. "But that's the story. Adam was found
close by your fire--shot in the back and dragged from the stirrup;
shot as he rode, so close up that his shirt took fire. And no one rode
in Redgate yesterday, but you, and those three, and Adam Forbes."

"Yes. That might very well be true," said Johnny.

"It is true. They wouldn't dare tell it that way if it wasn't true.
Tracks show for themselves. And they knew that good men would be
reading those tracks."