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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Then what did you send that youngster in for with mouthful of durned lies?" Sikkem stared. But his look was unconvincing. Moments passed before his reply came, and in those moments the keen eyes of his employer were busy. The man was still in the working kit of a cowpuncher. Even to the chapps, and the prairie hat crushed down on his ugly bullet head.
How?" The questions came rapidly. "It came the night you were at Orrville. It was flung in through the open window late at night. I'd fallen asleep in my chair waiting. It hit me on the face. They'd made it fast around a grass-tuft." "Who sent it?" "It must have been the man, Sikkem, who's just sent in word to you he's shot up." "Sikkem? Why?"
He jest got in, an' nigh fell plumb in his tracks out o' the saddle. I don't guess any feller but Sikkem could ha' done it. He's tough mighty tough." Sikkem! Elvine moved from the window. Sikkem! Her heart was pounding in her bosom, and, for a moment, her brain seemed in a whirl. Sikkem had discovered the raiders and was willing to give them away.
When he heard I was married to you he pretended he'd mistaken me for some one else. And when he explained who, and his feelings against that woman it was me he was describing I knew he was, as was suspected, one of the Lightfoot gang at Orrville. Sikkem wrote that note. I could stake my life on it. And now he's sent for you. He's asking you to go out to Spruce Crossing at night.
He would sell the last breath in his body at the highest price he could make his enemies pay. He had walked into a trap laid by the rustlers, headed, perhaps, by Sikkem Bruce, with his eyes wide open, and some almost insane yearning made him glad. Now he crouched down against the wall beside the table. He had flung up a barrier of straw palliasse before him.
Jeff urged him. In the pause Jeff's straining ears caught again the sound of movement, and he wondered why development was not precipitated. Perhaps But Sikkem had nearly reached the distant wall, and, at that instant, a whistle shrilled through the building. Jeff knew he was trapped. But, with a wonderful sense of detachment, mind and body worked almost electrically.
It was the figure of Sikkem Bruce, bearing no trace whatever of any mortal injury, and with a look of wide-eyed surprise upon his evil countenance. Jeff moved up the room. He approached without haste. His eyes were steady, and his expression one of tight-lipped determination. There was something coldly commanding in his attitude. His fair, bronzed features, keen, set, displayed no weakening.
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