ould like to know
what the Wolf wanted so blamed bad. Guess I'll not follow Mr. Leroy just
now till my leg is in better shape. Maybe I had better investigate a
little bit round town first."

The body was taken back to the Gold Nugget and placed on a table,
pending the arrival of the undertaker. It chanced that Collins, looking
absently over the crowd, glimpsed a gray felt hat that looked familiar
by reason of a frayed silver band found it. Underneath the hat was a
Mexican, and him the sheriff ordered to step forward.

"Where did you get that hat, Manuel?"

"My name is Jose--Jose Archuleta," corrected the olive-hued one.

"I ain't worrying about your name, son. What I want to know is where you
found that hat."

"In the alley off the plaza, senor."

"All right. Chuck it up here."

"Muy bien, senor." And the dusty hat was passed from hand to hand till
it reached the sheriff.

Collins ripped off the silver band and tore out the sweat-pad. It was
an off chance--one in a thousand--but worth trying none the less. And a
moment later he knew it was the chance that won. For sewed to the inside
of the discolored sweat-pad was a little strip of silk. With his knife
he carefully removed the strip, and found between it and the leather a
folded fragment of paper closely covered with writing. He carried this
to the light, and made it out to be a memorandum of direction of some
sort. Slowly he spelled out the poorly written words:

From Y. N. took Unowhat. Went twenty yards strate for big rock. Eight
feet direckly west. Fifty yards in direcksion of suthern Antelope Peke.
Then eighteen to nerest cotonwood. J. H. begins hear.

Collins read the scrawl twice before an inkling of its meaning came home
to him. Then in a flash his brain was lighted. It was a memorandum of
the place where Dailey's share of the plunder was buried.

His confederates had known that he had it, and had risked capture to
make a thorough search for the paper. That they had not found it was due
only to the fact that the murdered man had lost his hat as he scurried
down the streets before them.

The doctor, having arrived, examined the wound and suggested an
anaesthetic. Collins laughed.

"I reckon not, doc. You round up that lead pill and I'll endure the
grief without knockout drops."

While the doctor was probing for the bullet lodged in his leg, the
sheriff studied the memorandum found in Dailey's hat. He found it blind,
disappointing work, for ther