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Updated: May 6, 2025
"He made my father a bad man," sobbed the girl; "an' made me go with him or my father would have to go to to go " "Never mind, girlie," Rathburn interrupted softly. "I don't want to hear the story. Just keep it to yourself an' start all over. It ain't a bad world, girlie, an' there's more good men in it than there's bad. Now, you can begin to live and be happy like you ought.
He lifted a piece of the carpet, opened a small trapdoor, reached inside, and brought out a bundle of bank notes. Rathburn took the money from him. Sautee still was kneeling as he heard Rathburn walk lightly to the front door and insert the key in the lock. He tried to cry out, but the effort resulted only in a croak in his throat. He heard the door close softly.
The three smaller lamps above the back bar next were cut to splinters by bullets and the place was in total darkness. Then there was silence, save for the sound of a horse's hoofs coming from somewhere behind the building. Rathburn drew back from the window as a match flared within and his two companions moved toward the front door.
"Who's Carlisle?" Rathburn asked dryly. Sautee frowned. "He's a well, I guess you'd call him a sort of adventurer. I knew him down in Arizona. He follows the camps when they're good, and this one happens to be good right now, for we're improving the property. That's how he happened to come up here about a year ago. Then, when the first robbery occurred, I engaged him as a sort of special agent.
He showed no surprise, no concern. He made no move toward the pair of guns in the holsters of the belt which reposed on top of his desk. He spoke first. "Have you come to give yourself up, Rathburn?" "Hardly that, sheriff," replied Rathburn cheerfully. "I arrived in town this morning after most of the population had moved to the desert and the country aroun' Imagination.
"Will you come to breakfast with me, Mr. Rathburn?" Rathburn took the hand with a curious side glance at Mannix. "I'm powerful hungry," he confessed; "an' I don't reckon I'd be showing the best of manners if I balked at havin' breakfast with the man that got me out of jail." "Quite right," admitted Sautee, winking at the deputy. "Well, perhaps I have my reasons.
Lamy hesitated with a wild look in his eyes. The muzzle of Rathburn's gun pressed harder against his midriff. He dropped lightly into the cellar. Rathburn pulled the rug against the trapdoor as he followed, then let down the door, certain that the rug would fall into place.
When they reached the top of the west rim they looked back and saw four horsemen on the shale slope leading to the pocket. Brown evidently had split up his posse and was literally combing the hills for his quarry. "They'll know they're on the right trail when they see the remains of our dinner an' my pack down there," remarked Rathburn dryly.
You had to drop the two men you dropped aroun' here, boy; but they ain't forgettin' it." "Bob Long was headin' that posse," said Rathburn thoughtfully. "An' Bob Long's a sticker when he hits out on a man's trail," said Price. "Still, I guess you'd be safe in here for a while. There ain't many knows this place." "I don't figure on stayin' here long, Joe," said Rathburn.
He had surmised that the men had seen him coming back down the trail to the powder house with his human burden. Now he called Sautee into view. They would most naturally assume that it was the mine manager he had been carrying. "Come to the door where they can see you," he called to Sautee. The ring in his voice brought Sautee, white-faced and shivering, to the doorway beside Rathburn.
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