“But Foy’s run away,” stammered Breslin, disconcerted.

“Run away, hell!  He’s not here, you mean.  According to your precious story, Foy was leaving before Marr was killed—­or before you say Marr was killed.  Why don’t you look for him with the Bar Cross round-up?  There’s where he started for, you say?”

“I wired up and had a trusty man go out there quietly at once.  He’s staying there still—­quietly,” said the sheriff.  “Foy isn’t there—­and the Bar Cross hasn’t heard of the killing yet.  It won’t do, Major.  Foy’s run away.”

John Wesley Pringle, limp, slack, and rumpled in his chair, yawned, stretching his arms wide.

“This man Foy,” he ventured amiably, “if he really run away, he done a wise little stunt for himself, I think.  Because every little ever and anon, thin scraps of talk float in from your cookfire in the yard—­and there’s a heap of it about ropes and lynching, for instance.  If he hasn’t run away yet, he’d better—­and I’ll tell him so if I see him.  Stubby, red-faced, spindlin’, thickset, jolly little man, ain’t he?  Heavy-complected, broad-shouldered, dark blond, very tall and slender, weighs about a hundred and ninety, with a pale skin and a hollow-cheeked, plump, serious face?”

At this ill-timed and unthinkable levity Breslin stared in bewilderment; Lisner glared, gripping his fist convulsively; and Mr. Ben Creagan, an uneasy third inquisitor, breathed hard through his nose.  Anastacio Barela, the fourth and last inquisitor, maintained unmoved the disinterested attitude he had held since the interrogation began.  Feet crossed, he lounged in his chair, graceful, silent, smoking, listening, idly observant of wall and ceiling.

No answer being forthcoming to his query Pringle launched another: 

“Speaking of faces, Creagan, old sport, what’s happened to you and your nose?  You look like someone had spread you on the minutes.”  He eyed Creagan with solicitous interest.

Mr. Creagan’s battered face betrayed emotion.  Pringle’s shameless mendacity shocked him.  But it was Creagan’s sorry plight that he must affect never to have seen this insolent Pringle before.  The sheriff’s face mottled with wrath.  Pringle reflected swiftly:  The sheriff’s rage hinted strongly that he was in Creagan’s confidence and hence was no stranger to last night’s mishap at the hotel; their silence proclaimed their treacherous intent.

On the other hand, these two, if not the others, knew very well that Pringle had left town with Foy and had probably stayed with him; that the Major must know all that Foy and Pringle knew.  Evidently, Pringle decided, these two, at least, could expect no direct information from their persistent questionings; what they hoped for was unconscious betrayal by some slip of the tongue.  As for young Breslin, Pringle had long since sized him up for what the Major knew him to be—­a good-hearted, right-meaning simpleton.  In the indifferent-seeming Anastacio, Pringle recognized an unknown quantity.