Dingwell gave a fishing-party next day. His invited guests were Sheriff Sweeney, Royal Beaudry, Pat Ryan, and Superintendent Elder, of the Western Express Company. Among those present, though at a respectable distance, were Ned Rutherford and Brad Charlton.

The fishermen took with them neither rods nor bait. Their flybooks were left at home. Beaudry brought to the meeting-place a quarter-inch rope and a grappling-iron with three hooks. Sweeney and Ryan carried rifles and the rest of the party revolvers.

Dave himself did the actual fishing. After the grappling-hook had been attached to the rope, he dropped it into Big Creek from a large rock under the bridge that leads to town from Lonesome Park. He hooked his big fish at the fourth cast and worked it carefully into the shallow water. Roy waded into the stream and dragged the catch ash.o.r.e. It proved to be a gunnysack worth twenty thousand dollars.

Elder counted the sacks inside. "Everything is all right. How did you come to drop the money here?"

"I'm mentioning no names, Mr. Elder. But I was so fixed that I couldn't turn back. If I left the road, my tracks would show. There were reasons why I didn't want to continue on into town with the loot.

So, as I was crossing the bridge, without leaving the saddle or even stopping, I deposited the gold in the Big Creek safety deposit vault,"

Dingwell answered with a grin.

"But supposing the Rutherfords had found it?" The superintendent put his question blandly.

The face of the cattleman was as expressive as a stone wall. "Did I mention the Rutherfords?" he asked, looking straight into the eye of the Western Express man. "I reckon you didn't hear me quite right."

Elder laughed a little. He was a Westerner himself. "Oh, I heard you, Mr. Dingwell. But I haven't heard a lot of things I'd like to know."

The cattleman pushed the sack with his toe. "Money talks, folks say."

"Maybe so. But it hasn't told me why you couldn't go back along the road you came, why you couldn't leave the road, and why you didn't want to go right up to Sweeney's office with the sack. It hasn't given me any information about where you have been the past two weeks, or how--"

"My gracious! He bubbles whyfors and howfors like he had just come uncorked," murmured Dave, in his slow drawl. "Just kinder effervesces them out of the mouth."

"I know you're not going to tell me anything you don't want me to know, still--"

"You done guessed it first, crack. Move on up to the haid of the cla.s.s."

"Still, you can't keep me from thinking. You can call the turn on the fellows that robbed the Western Express Company whenever you feel like it. Right now you could name the men that did it."

Dave's most friendly, impudent smile beamed upon the superintendent.

"I thank you for the compliment, Mr. Elder. Honest, I didn't know how smart a haid I had in my hat till you told me."

"It's good ye've got an air-tight _alibi_ yoursilf, Dave," grinned Pat Ryan.

"I've looked up his _alibi_. It will hold water," admitted Elder genially. "Well, Dingwell, if you won't talk, you won't. We'll move on up to the bank and deposit our find. Then the drinks will be on me."

The little procession moved uptown. A hundred yards behind it came young Rutherford and Charlton as a rear guard. When the contents of the sack had been put in a vault for safe-keeping, Elder invited the party into the Last Chance. Dave and Roy ordered b.u.t.termilk.

Dingwell gave his partner a nudge. "See who is here."

The young man nodded gloomily. He had recognized already the two men drinking at a table in the rear.

"Meldrum and Hart make a sweet pair to draw to when they're tanking up.

They're about the two worst bad men in this part of the country. My advice is to take the other side of the street when you see them coming," Ryan contributed.

The rustlers glowered at Elder's party, but offered no comment other than some sneering laughter and ribald whispering. Yet Beaudry breathed freer when he was out in the open again lengthening the distance between him and them at every stride.

Ryan walked as far as the hotel with Dave and his partner.

"Come in and have dinner with us, Pat," invited the cattleman.

The Irishman shook his head. "Can't, Dave. Got to go round to the Elephant Corral and look at my horse. A nail wint into its foot last night."

After they had dined, Dingwell looked at his watch. "I want you to look over the ranch today, son. We'll ride out and I'll show you the place. But first I've got to register a kick with the station agent about the charges for freight on a wagon I had shipped in from Denver.

Will you stop at Salmon's and order this bill of groceries sent up to the corral? I'll meet you here at 2.30."

Roy walked up Mission Street as far as Salmon's New York Grocery and turned in the order his friend had given him. After he had seen it filled, he strolled along the sunny street toward the plaza. It was one of those warm, somnolent New Mexico days as peaceful as old age.

Burros blinked sleepily on three legs and a hoof-tip. Cowponies switched their tails indolently to brush away flies. An occasional half-garbed Mexican lounged against a door jamb or squatted in the shade of a wall. A squaw from the reservation crouched on the curb beside her display of pottery. Not a sound disturbed the siesta of Battle b.u.t.te.

Into this peace broke an irruption of riot. A group of men poured through the swinging doors of a saloon into the open arcade in front.

Their noisy disputation shattered the sunny stillness like a fusillade in the desert. Plainly they were much the worse for liquor.

Roy felt again the familiar clutch at his throat, the ice drench at his heart, and the faint slackness of his leg muscles. For in the crowd just vomited from the Silver Dollar were Meldrum, Fox, Hart, Charlton, and Ned Rutherford.

Charlton it was that caught sight of the pa.s.sing man. With an exultant whoop he leaped out, seized Beaudry, and swung him into the circle of hillmen.

"Tickled to death to meet up with you, Mr.

Royal-Cherokee-Beaudry-Street. How is every little thing a-coming?

Fine as silk, eh? You'd ought to be laying by quite a bit of the mazuma, what with rewards and spy money together," taunted Charlton.

To the center of the circle Meldrum elbowed his drunken way. "Lemme get at the pink-ear. Lemme bust him one," he demanded.

Ned Rutherford held him back. "Don't break yore breeching, Dan. Brad has done spoke for him," the young man drawled.

Into the white face of his victim Charlton puffed the smoke of his cigar. "If you ain't too busy going fishing maybe you could sell me a windmill to-day. How about that, Mr. Cornell-I-Yell?"

"Where's yore dry nurse Dingwell?" broke in the ex-convict bitterly.

"Thought he tagged you everywhere. Tell the son-of-a-gun for me that next time we meet I'll curl his hair right."

Roy said nothing. He looked wildly around for a way of escape and found none. A half ring of jeering faces walled him from the street.

"Lemme get at him. Lemme crack him one on the bean," insisted Meldrum as he made a wild pa.s.s at Beaudry.

"No hurry a-tall," soothed Ned. "We got all evening before us. Take yore time, Dan."

"Looks to me like it's certainly up to Mr.

Cherokee-What's-his-name-Beaudry to treat the crowd," suggested Chet Fox.

The young man clutched at the straw. "Sure. Of course, I will. Glad to treat, even though I don't drink myself," he said with a weak, forced heartiness.

"You _don't_ drink. The h.e.l.l you don't!" cut in Meldrum above the Babel of voices.

"He drinks--hic--b.u.t.termilk," contributed Hart.

"He'll drink whiskey when I give the word, by Gad!" Meldrum shook himself free of Rutherford and pressed forward. He dragged a bottle from his pocket, drew out the cork, and thrust the liquor at Roy.

"Drink, you yellow-streaked coyote--and drink a-plenty."

Roy shook his head. "No!--no," he protested. "I--I--never touch it."