“That will do nicely,” said Anastacio.  “You’re guilty as hell!  I’ll put your own handcuffs on you.  Oddly enough, the law provides that when it is necessary to arrest the sheriff the duty falls to the coroner.  It is very appropriate.  You must pardon me, Mr. Lisner, if I seem unsympathetic.  Dick Marr was your friend!  And you have not been entirely fair with Foy, I fear....  Creagan, we’ll hold you and Joe for complicity and for conspiracy in Foy’s case.  We’ll arrest Applegate, too, when we get to camp.  He’ll be awfully vexed.”

“What!” shrieked the sheriff, raising his manacled hands.  “Liar!  Murderer!”

“So Applegate’s not dead?  Well, I’m just as well pleased,” said Pringle.

“Not even hurt badly.  I was after the Man Lower Down.  What the Major told me was that the Barelas were at the ranch—­more than enough to hold Lisner’s crowd down.  They come at daylight.  I was expecting that, and waiting.  As I told you, that’s the best thing I do—­waiting.”

“But how did you know?” demanded Breslin, puzzled.

“I didn’t know, for sure.  I had a hunch and I played it.  So I killed poor Applegate—­temporarily.  It worked out just right and nothing to carry.”

“One of the mainest matters with the widely-known world,” said Pringle wearily, “is that people won’t play their hunches.  They haven’t spunk enough to believe what they know.  Let me spell it out for you in words of two cylinders, Breslin:  You saw that I knew Creagan and Applegate, while they positively refused to know me at any price; you heard the sheriff deny that I was at the Gadsden House before I’d claimed anything of the sort.  Of course you didn’t know anything about the fight at the Gadsden House, but that was enough to show you something wasn’t right, just the same.  You had all the material to build a nice plump hunch.  It all went over your head.  You put me in mind of the lightning bug: 

    “The lightning bug is brilliant,
      But it hasn’t any mind;
    It wanders through creation
      With its headlight on behind.

“Come on—­let’s move.  I’m fair dead for sleep.”

“Just a minute!” said Anastacio.  “I want to call your attention to the big dust off in the north.  I’ve been watching it half an hour.  That dust, if I’m not mistaken, is the Bar Cross coming; they’ve heard the news!”

“So, Mr. Lisner, you hadn’t a chance to get by with it,” said Pringle slowly and thoughtfully.  “If I hadn’t balked you, the Barelas stood ready; if the Barelas failed, yonder big dust was on the way; half your own posse would have turned on you for half a guess at the truth.  It’s a real nice little world—­and it hates a lie.  A good many people lay their fine-drawn plans, but they mostly don’t come off!  Men are but dust, they tell us.  Magnificent dust!  This nice little old world of ours, in the long run, is going right.  You can’t beat the Game!  Once, yes—­or twice—­not in the long run.  The Percentage is all against you.  You can’t beat the Game!”