"If you'll be as brief as possible, Mr. Flatray. I've been in the desert two days and want to change my clothes."
"I'll not detain you. It's about this gold robbery."
"Yes."
She could not take her eyes from him. Something told her that he knew her secret, or part of it. Her heart was fluttering like a caged thrush.
"Shall we begin at the beginning?"
"If you like."
"Or in the middle, say."
"If only you'll begin anywhere," she said impatiently.
"How will this do for a beginning, then? 'One thousand dollars will be paid by Thomas L. Morse for the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last.'"
She was shaken, there was no denying it. He could see the ebb of blood from her cheeks, the sudden stiffening of the slender figure.
She did not speak until she had control of her voice. "Dear me! What has all that to do with me?"
"A good deal, I'm afraid. You know how much, better than I do."
"Perhaps I'm stupid. You'll have to be a great deal clearer before I can understand you."
"I've noticed that it's a lot easier to understand what you want to than what you don't want to."
Sharply a thought smote her. "Have you seen Phil Norris lately?"
"No, I haven't. Do you think it likely that he would confess?"
"Confess?" she faltered.
"I see I'll have to start at the beginning, after all. It's pretty hard to say just where that is. It might be when Morse got hold of your father's claim, or another fellow might say it was when the Boone-Bellamy feud began, and that is a mighty long time ago."
"The Boone-Bellamy feud," echoed the girl.
"Yes. The real name of our friend Norris is Dunc Boone."
"He's no friend of mine." She flamed it out with such intensity that he was surprised.
"Glad to hear it. I can tell you, then, that he's a bad lot. He was driven out of Arkansas after a suspected murder. It was a killing from ambush. They couldn't quite hang it on him, but he lit a shuck to save his skin from lynchers. At that time he was a boy. Couldn't have been more than seventeen."
"Who did he kill?"
"One of the Bellamy faction. The real name of T. L. Morse is----"
"--Richard Bellamy."
"How do you know that?" he asked in surprise.
"I've known it since the first day I met him."
"Known that he was wanted for murder in Arkansas?"
"Yes."
"And you protected him?"
"I had a reason." She did not explain that her reason was Jack Flatray, between whom and the consequences of his rustling she had stood.
He pondered that a moment. "Well, Morse, or Bellamy, told me all about it. Now that Boone has recognized him, the game is up. He's ready to go back and stand trial if he must. I've communicated with the authorities in Arkansas and I'll hear from them in a day or two."
"What has this to do with the hold-up?"
"That's right, the hold-up. Well, this fellow Boone got your father to drinking, and then sprung it on him to rob the stage when the bullion was being shipped. Somehow Boone had got inside information about when this was to be. He had been nosing around up at the mine, and may have overheard something. O' course we know what your father would have done if he hadn't been drinking. He's straight as a string, even if he does go off like powder. But when a man's making a blue blotter of himself, things don't look the same to him. Anyhow he went in."
"He didn't. I can prove he didn't," burst from Melissy's lips.
"Be glad to hear your proof later. He ce'tainly planned the hold-up. Jim Budd overheard him."
"Did Jim tell you that?"
"Don't blame him for that. He didn't mean to tell, but I wound him up so he couldn't get away from it. I'll show you later why he couldn't."
"I'm sure you must have been very busy, spying and everything," she told him bitterly.
"I've kept moving. But to get back to the point. Your father and Boone were on the ground where the stage was robbed _either at the time or right after_. Their tracks were all over there. Then they got on their horses and rode up the lateral."
"But they couldn't. The ditch was full," broke from the girl.
"You're right it was. You must be some observing to know when that ditch is full and empty to an hour. I reckon you've got an almanac of tides," he said ironically.
She bit her lip with chagrin. "I just happened to notice."
"Some folks _are_ more noticing than others. But you're surely right. They came up the ditch one on each side. Now, why one on each side, do you reckon?"
Melissy hid the dread that was flooding her heart. "I'm sure I don't know. You know everything else. I suppose you do that, too, if they really did."
"They had their reasons, but we won't go into that now. First off when they reach the house they take a bunch of sheep down to the ditch to water them. Now, why?"
"Why, unless because they needed water?"
"We'll let that go into the discard too just now. Let's suppose your father and Boone dumped the gold box down into the creek somewhere after they had robbed the stage. Suppose they had a partner up at the head-gates. When the signal is given down comes the water, and the box is covered by it. Mebbe that night they take it away and bury it somewhere else."
The girl began to breathe again. He knew a good deal, but he was still off the track in the main points.
"And who is this partner up at the canal? Have you got him located too?"
"I might guess."
"Well?"--impatiently.
"A young lady hailing from this _hacienda_ was out gathering flowers all mo'ning. She was in her runabout. The tracks led straight from here to the head-gates. I followed them through the sands. There's a little break in one of the rubber tires. You'll find that break mark every eight feet or so in the sand wash."
"I opened the head-gates, then, did I?"
"It looks that way, doesn't it?"
"At a signal from father?"
"I reckon."
"And that's all the evidence you've got against him and me?" she demanded, still outwardly scornful, but very much afraid at heart.
"Oh, no, that ain't all, Miss Lee. Somebody locked the Chink in during this play. He's still wondering why."
"He dreamed it. Very likely he had been rolling a pill."
"Did I dream this too?" From his coat pocket he drew the piece of black shirting she had used as a mask. "I found it in the room where your father put me up that first night I stayed here. It was your brother Dick's room, and this came from the pocket of a shirt hanging in the closet. Now, who do you reckon put it there?"
For the first time in her life she knew what it was to feel faint. She tried to speak, but the words would not come from her parched throat. How could he be so hard and cruel, this man who had once been her best friend? How could he stand there so like a machine in his relentlessness?
"We--we used to--to play at hold-up when he was a boy," she gasped.
He shook his head. "No, I reckon that won't go. You see, I've found the piece this was torn from, _and I found it in your father's coat_. I went into his room on tiptoe that