“When it comes to the names, partner, seems like you got an edge over me.”

“Have I?  I’m Sandersen.  Glad to know you, Sinclair.”

“Sandersen!” repeated the stranger slowly.  “Sandersen!”

Letting his fingers fall away nervelessly from the hand of the other, he sighed deeply.

Sandersen with a side-glance followed every changing shade of expression in that hard face.  How could Sinclair attack a man who had just defended him from a terrible charge?  It could not be.  For the moment, at least, Sandersen felt he was safe.  In the future, many things might happen.  At the very least, he had gained a priceless postponement of the catastrophe.

“Them that do me a good turn is writ down in red,” Sinclair was saying; “and them that step on my toes is writ down the same way.  Sandersen, I got an idea that for one reason or another I ain’t going to forget you in a hurry.”

There was a grim double meaning in that speech which Sandersen alone could understand.  The others of the self-appointed posse had apparently made up their minds that Sandersen was right, and that this was a cold trail.

“It’s like Sinclair says,” admitted the judge.  “We got to find a gent that had a reason for wishing to have Quade die.  Where’s the man?”

“Hunt for the reason first and find the man afterward,” said big Larsen, still smiling.

“All right!  Did anybody owe Quade money, anybody Quade was pressing for it?”

It was the judge who advanced the argument in this solemn and dry form.  Denver Jim declared that to his personal knowledge Quade had neither borrowed nor loaned.

“Well, then, had Quade ever made many enemies?  We know Quade was a fighter.  Recollect any gents that might hold grudges?”

“Young Penny hated the ground he walked on.  Quade beat Penny to a pulp down by the Perkin water hole.”

“Penny wouldn’t do a murder.”

“Maybe it was a fair fight,” broke in Larsen.

“Fair nothin’,” said Buck Mason.  “Don’t we all know that Quade was fast with a gun?  He barely had it out in his hand when the other gent drilled him.  And he was shot from above.  No, sir, the way it happened was something like this.  The murderin’ skunk sat on his hoss saying goodby to Quade, and, while they was shaking hands or something like that, he goes for his gun and plugs Quade.  Maybe it was a gent that knew he didn’t have a chance agin’ Quade.  Maybe—­”

He broke off short in his deductions and smote his hands together with a tremendous oath.  “Boys, I got it!  It’s Cold Feet that done the job.  It’s Gaspar that done it!”

They stared at Buck vaguely.

“Mason, Cold Feet ain’t got the nerve to shoot a rabbit.”

“Not in a fight.  This was a murder!”

“What’s the schoolteacher’s reason!”

“Don’t he love Sally Bent?  Didn’t Quade love her?” He raised his voice.  “I’m a big fool for forgetting!  Didn’t I see him ride over the hill to Quade’s place and come back in the evening?  Didn’t I see it?  Why else would he have called on Quade?”