“He’s under suspicion.  You said yourself he was holding up them tourists.”

“But you can’t make me swear that in court.”

Buck Hardy glared at the younger man.  “See here, Lorry, I don’t understand your game.  Suppose the man ain’t guilty.  He was locked up—­and by me, representing this county.  You can’t prove that the Starr boys would have done anything to him.  And you can’t monkey with the law to suit yourself as long as I’m sheriff.  Am I right?” And Hardy turned to Waring.

“You’re right, Hardy.”

Lorry’s gray eyes shone with a peculiar light.  “What you goin’ to do about it, Buck?”

“Two of my boys are out looking for the man.  You’re under arrest till he is brought in.”

“You aim to lock me in that calaboose?”

“No.  But, understand, you’re under arrest.  You can’t leave town.”

“Say, now, Buck, ain’t you kind of crowdin’ me into the fence?”

“I’d arrest my own brother for a trick like that.”

Lorry gazed at the ground for a minute.  He glanced up.  Alice Weston sat watching them.  She could not hear what they were saying, but their attitudes confirmed her apprehension.

“I’d like to speak to ma a minute,” said Lorry.

“Go ahead.  There’s no hurry.”

Waring, who had been watching his son closely, strolled to the veranda steps and sat down.

Hardy lighted a cigar.  “I hate to do this, Waring,” he told the other.

“That’s all right, Hardy.”

The sheriff leaned close.  “I figured to bluff him into telling which way the hobo went.  Mebby he’ll talk later.”

Waring smiled.  “You have a free hand so far as I am concerned,” he said.

Alice Weston was talking with her mother when she heard a cautious step on the stairway behind her.  She turned her head slightly.  Lorry, booted and spurred, stood just within the doorway.  He had something in his hand; a peculiarly shaped bundle wrapped loosely in a newspaper.  Hardy was talking to Waring.  The undersheriff was standing close to Waring’s horse.  Alice Weston had seen the glint in Lorry’s eyes.  She held her breath.

Without a word of warning, and before the group on the veranda knew what was happening, Lorry shot from the doorway, leaped from the edge of the veranda rail, and alighted square in the saddle of Waring’s horse, Dex.  The buckskin whirled and dashed down the road, one rein dragging.  Lorry reached down, and with a sinuous sweep of his body recovered the loose rein.  As he swung round the first corner he waved something that looked strangely like a club in a kind of farewell salute.

Alice Weston had risen.  The undersheriff grabbed the reins of the horse nearest him and mounted.  Hardy ran to the other horse.  Side by side they raced down the street and disappeared round a corner.

“What is it?” queried Alice Weston.

Waring still sat on the steps.  He was laughing when he turned to answer the girl’s question.