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Updated: April 30, 2025
And Lessard, as I said before, had passed up the gold episode at the time; all his concern seemed to be for the robbers' apprehension, which was natural enough since a crime had undoubtedly been committed and he bore the responsibility of catching and punishing the perpetrators. The restoration of stolen goods was probably dwarfed in his mind by the importance of capturing the stealers.
I expected he would object to talking business out of business hours, but I didn't care; I wanted to know what he was going to do, before I started on that three-day trip. Fortunately Lessard was an early bird, like myself. I met him striding toward the building that seemed to be a clearing house for the official contingent.
Lessard turned the point, and as the carbine-hammer clicked back under the pull of my thumb, MacRae sprang to his feet from behind a squatty clump of sage, right in Lessard's path. Nervy as men are made, MacRae worshiped at the shrine of an even break, a square deal for friend or foe. And Lessard got it.
"If you should have speech with Lessard before you put his light out, tell him I go to prepare a place for him a superheated grid! Now drift vamos hit the trail. Remember, the gorge at the mouth of Sage Creek. Good-by."
His left hand was at its old, familiar trick fingers shut tight over the thumb till the cords stood tense between the knuckles and wrist a never-failing sign that internally he was close to the boiling-point, no matter how calm he appeared on the surface. And when Lessard flung out that last unthinkable accusation, the explosion came.
Just smiled, a sardonic sort of grimace, and unbuckled his belt and handed it over without a word. He'd begun to cool. "Reduced to the ranks thirty days in irons solitary confinement!" Lessard snapped the words out with a wolfish satisfaction. "Keep a close mouth, Sarge," MacRae spoke in Spanish with his eyes bent on the floor, "and don't quit the country till I get out."
The finale came when a trooper searched the bodies of Lessard and Gregory, and relieved Hicks and Bevans of the plunder that was still concealed about their persons. They counted the money solemnly, on the same desk by which Lessard stood when MacRae flung that hot challenge in his teeth, and lost his stripes as the penalty.
"It's a wonder," I said, as the thought occurred to me, "that Lyn quit Walsh so soon. Why didn't she stay a while longer and see if these famous preservers of the peace wouldn't manage to gather in the men who killed her father? Why, hang it! she didn't even wait to see if you found that stuff at the Stone and Lessard must have told her that somebody had gone to look for it."
"Then Lessard conceived the theory that you fellows had learned more than you told. We were fixed to get the paymaster on that trip. We shook you, and did the job. MacRae was on the way you know. He sent you to the Stone with those devils to keep cases on you. It seemed a pity to let slip that gold-dust after they had gone so far. You know how that panned out. We had a stake then.
"Your intentions," I interrupted, "will cut a mighty small figure if your friend Lessard gets hold of you in the next day or two." "That's the melancholy truth," he returned seriously. "I imagine we'd get a pretty rough deal; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that troop has received orders, by now, to shoot first and arrest afterward.
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