Bucky found a surprise waiting for him at the stables. A heavy hand descended upon his shoulder. He whirled, and looked up into the face of Sheriff Collins.
“You here, Val?” he cried in surprise.
“That's what. Any luck, Bucky?”
They went out and sat down on the big rocks back of the corral. Here each told the other his story, with certain reservations. Collins had just got back from Epitaph, where he had been to get the fragments of paper which told the secret of the buried treasure. He was expecting to set out in the early morning to meet Leroy.
“I'll go with you,” said Bucky immediately.
Val shook his head. “No, I'm to go alone. That's the agreement.”
“Of course if that's the agreement.” Nevertheless, the ranger formed a private intention not to be far from the scene of action.
Chapter 21.
The Wolf Pack
“Good evening, gentlemen. Hope I don't intrude on the festivities.”
Leroy smiled down ironically on the four flushed, startled faces that looked up at him. Suspicion was alive in every rustle of the men's clothes. It breathed from the lowering countenances. It itched at the fingers longing for the trigger. The unending terror of a bandit's life is that no man trusts his fellow. Hence one betrays another for fear of betrayal, or stabs him in the back to avoid it.
The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the first inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting voice. Now, as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the back of a chair and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they looked the picture of schoolboys caught by their master in a conspiracy. How long had he been there? How much had he heard? Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they were, his confident contempt still cowed the very men who were planning his destruction. A minute before they had been full of loud threats and boastings; now they could only search each other's faces sullenly for a cue.
“Celebrating Chaves' return from manana land, I reckon. That's the proper ticket. I wonder if we couldn't afford to kill another of Collins' fatted calves.”
Mr. Hardman, not enjoying the derisive raillery, took a hand in the game. “I expect the boys hadn't better touch the sheriff's calves, now you and him are so thick.”
“We're thick, are we?” Leroy's indolent eyes narrowed slightly as they rested on him.
“Ain't you? It sure seemed that way to me when I looked out of that mesquit wash just above Eldorado Springs and seen you and him eating together like brothers and laughing to beat the band. You was so clost to him I couldn't draw a bead on him without risking its hitting you.”
“Spying, eh?”
“If that's the word you want to use, cap. And you were enjoying yourselves proper.”
“Laughing, were we? That must have been when he told me how funny you looked in the 'altogether' shedding false teeth and information about hidden treasure.”
“Told you that, did he?” Mr. Hardman incontinently dropped repartee as a weapon too subtle, and fell back on profanity.
“That's right pat to the minute, cap, what you say about the information he leaks,” put in Neil. “How about that information? I'll be plumb tickled to death to know you're carrying it in you vest pocket.”
“And if I'm not?”
“Then ye are a bigger fool than I had expected sorr, to come back here at all,” said the Irishman truculently.
“I begin to think so myself, Mr. Reilly. Why keep faith with a set of swine like you?”
“Are you giving it to us that you haven't got those papers?”
Leroy nodded, watching them with steady, alert eyes. He knew he stood on the edge of a volcano that might explode at any moment.
“What did I tell yez?” Reilly turned savagely to the other disaffected members of the gang. “Didn't I tell yez he was selling us out?”
Somehow Leroy's revolver seemed to jump to his hand without a motion on his part. It lay loosely in his limp fingers, unaimed and undirected.
“SAY THAT AGAIN, PLEASE.”
Beneath the velvet of Leroy's voice ran a note more deadly than any threat could have been. It rang a bell for a silence in which the clock of death seemed to tick. But as the seconds fled Reilly's courage oozed away. He dared not accept the invitation to reach for his weapon and try conclusions with this debonair young daredevil. He mumbled a retraction, and flung, with a curse, out of the room.
Leroy slipped the revolver back in his holster and quoted, with a laugh:
“To every coward safety, And afterward his evil hour.”
“What's that?” demanded Neil. “I ain't no coward, even if Jay is. I don't knuckle under to any man. You got a right to ante up with some information. I want to know why you ain't got them papers you promised to bring back with you.”
“And I, too, senor. I desire to know what it means,” added Chaves, his eyes glittering.
“That's the way to chirp, gentlemen. I haven't got them because Forbes blundered on us, and I had to take a pasear awful sudden. But I made an appointment to meet Collins to-morrow.”
“And you think he'll keep it?” scoffed Neil.
“I know he will.”
“You seem to know a heap about him,” was the significant retort.
“Take care, York.”
“I'm not Hardman, cap. I say what I think.
“And you think?” suggested Leroy gently.
“I don't know what to think yet. You're either a fool or a traitor. I ain't quite made up my mind. When I find out you'll ce'tainly hear from me straight. Come on, boys.” And Neil vanished through the door.
An hour later there came a knock at Leroy's door. Neil answered his permission to enter, followed by the other trio of flushed beauties. To the outlaw chief it was at once apparent with what Dutch courage they had been fortifying themselves to some resolve. It was characteristic of him, though he knew on how precarious a thread his life was hanging, that disgust at the foul breaths with which they were polluting the atmosphere was his first dominant emotion.
“I wish, Lieutenant Chaves, next time you emigrate you'd bring another brand of poison out to the boys. I can't go this stuff. Just remember that, will you?”
The outlaw chief's hard eye ran over the rebels and read them like a primer They had come to depose him certainly, to kill him perhaps. Though this last he doubted. It wouldn't be like Neil to plan his murder, and it wouldn't be like
