“Sheriff, you certainly are an easy mark!” returned Nueces, in great disgust.  “Foy didn’t go on afoot or horseback, because he was never there.  I’ve told you twice:  Cowan left that calico horse on purpose for us to find.  Vorhis is Foy’s friend.  Can’t you see, if Foy had tried to get away by hard riding he would have had a fresh horse, not the one he rode from Las Uvas, and you wouldn’t have found a penful of fresh horses to chase him with?  Not in a thousand years!  That was to make it nice and easy for you to ride on—­a six-year-old kid could see through it!  It’s a wonder you didn’t all fall for it and chase away.  No, sir!  Foy either stopped down on the river and sent his horse on to fool us—­or, more likely, he’s up in the Buttes.  Did you look there?”

“I sent the boys round to out sign.  I didn’t feel justified in hunting out the rough places till we had more men.  Too much cover for him.”

“And none for you, I s’pose?  Mamma! but you’re a fine sheriff!  Look now:  After we started back here we sighted a dust comin’ ’way up north.  We went over, and ‘twas Hargis, the Major’s buckaroo, throwin’ in a bunch from the round-up.  He didn’t know nothin’ and was not right sure of that—­till I mentioned your reward.  Soon as ever I mentioned twenty-five hundred, he loosened up right smart.”

“Well?  Did he know where Foy was?”

“No; but he knew of the place where I judge Foy is, this very yet.  Gosh!” said Nueces River in deep disgust, “it beats hell what men will do for a little dirty money!  Seems there’s a cave near the top of the least of them two buttes—­the roughest one—­a cave with two mouths, one right on the big top.  Nobody much knows where it is, only the V H outfit.”

Pringle had edged across the room.  He now plucked at Bell Applegate’s sleeve.

“Say, is that right about that reward—­twenty-five hundred?” he whispered.  His eyes glistened.

“Forty-five,” said Bell behind his hand.  “The Masons, they put up a thousand, and Dick’s old uncle—­that would have let Dick starve or work—­he tacked on a thousand more.  Dead or alive!” He looked down at Pringle’s face, at Pringle’s working fingers, opening and shutting avariciously; he sneered.  “Don’t you wish you may get it?  S-sh!  Hear what the old man’s saying.”

During the whispered colloquy the old ranger had kept on: 

“There’s where he is, a twenty-to-one shot!  He’ll lay quiet, likely, thinkin’ we’ll miss him.  Brush growin’ over both the cave mouths, Hargis says, so you might pass right by if you didn’t know where to look.  These short nights he couldn’t never get clear on foot.  Thirty mile to the next water—­we’d find his tracks and catch him.  But he might make a break to get away, at that.  Never can tell about a he-man like that.  We can’t take no chances.  We’ll pick a bite of supper and then we surround that hill, quiet as mice, and close up on him.  He can’t see us to shoot if we’re fool enough to make any noise.  Come daylight, we’ll have him cornered, every man behind a bowlder.  If he shows up he’s our meat; if he don’t we’ll starve him out.”