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"Heavens! What d'you take me for a rustler?" "Then quit your crazy talk of Judas. Your duty's plumb clear. Your duty's to hand these folks, these bandits, into our hands. The money's a matter of choice. I'll just hand my man a word or two, and we'll get back Orrville way." It was past midnight when Bob took up a position squatting on the sill of his own doorway.
He felt that the recent break up of the Lightfoot gang, so successfully achieved through the agency of hangings and shootings, should certainly contribute to his advantage. He argued that the long-endured threat against Orrville removed, money should automatically become easier, and, consequently, a considerable vista of his own personal prosperity opened out before his practical imagination.
But it was the termination of the discussion, a termination which left Ju victor, not because of the rightness of his views, but because there was no man in Orrville capable of joining issue with him in debate with any hope of success.
His blue eyes had grown colder and harder while he talked. There was a bite, too, in the manner in which he referred to the doings in Orrville of four years ago. There was a curious curl to his firm lips, which, to Nan's mind, suggested a painful smile. And she disliked it. She disliked his whole manner, which, just now, was none of the Jeff she had always known. Bud read deeper.
The notices of reward were sent broadcast, even penetrating to the Orrville country. They were set up as Jeff had promised, on tree trunks in the remoter hills where any chance eye might discover them. Where undoubtedly the men who constituted the gang must sooner or later discover them. The only response was a continuation of the raids.
There was every sort of emotion in the echo of the word as the saloon-keeper glanced vengefully across at a window through which the sun was pouring. "Guess we don't grow ice around these parts, 'cep' when we don't need it, an' I don't guess the railroad's discovered they hatched Orrville out yet. We got lager in soak, an' lager by the keg, down in a cool celler.
He says he's located the rustlers' camp and must hand Jeff the news before while he has time. Jeff's gone out there, and Sikkem's one of the gang and escaped from Orrville four years ago." "How d'you know?" It was Bud's heavy voice put the question. It was full of stern command. "I've seen him. I know him, and he knows me. He he wrote this and sent it me." Elvine thrust the crumpled note at Bud.
That which she now beheld was obviously satisfactory, and her smile deepened contentedly. They were busy days in Orrville. But business rarely yielded outward display in its citizens. Men talked more. They perhaps moved about more in their customary leisurely fashion. But any approach to bustle was as foreign to the rule of the township as it would be to a colony of aged snails in a cyclone.
An evil smile grew in the piercing black eyes, as the man regarded the beauty which, with him, was a long stored up memory. "Say, when d'you quit Orrville way?" he cried derisively. "Maybe you hadn't a heap o' use for it when your man, Bob, got shot up. Maybe you didn't need to stop around after you got your hands on the dollars I guess he left lying around.
In a flash she was back in Orrville, and her mind was searching amongst shadowy memories that had suddenly become acute. Sikkem! Sikkem! No. She must see Jeff. She must tell him of Sikkem. She must warn him, and show him her note. A sudden, crushing foreboding descended upon her, and she hurried toward the door. In a few seconds she was on the veranda confronting her husband.
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