“He’s helped you with your debts in return for your services in teaching a lot of foreigners to shoot straight?”

Wilmot frowned.

“Did it ever occur to you that he could have obtained half a dozen teachers for a tenth of the money?”

“That has occurred to me,” said Wilmot stiffly.

“Obviously then he has some ulterior use for you.”

“Very possibly.”

“Please don’t take offence.  There are reasons why you shouldn’t.  I am coming to them.  Remember, O’Hagan talked to me, and talked truth.  Blizzard is planning a revolution.  You are to be one of the leaders.  You imagine that one of the hell-governed Latin republics is to be the seat of operations, or you wouldn’t have gone into the thing.  But Blizzard is after bigger game than undeveloped wildernesses.  Mr. Allen, you are part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of New York City.”

“Say that again.”

The stranger smiled.  “O’Hagan at the last made a clean breast of everything.  He had to.  I came West to make him.”

“At the last?  What does that mean?”

“When a man won’t talk you have to make him—­even if you fix him so that he can never talk again.”

“Is O’Hagan dead?”

“He had his choice.  But he had to talk.  If I had let him off afterward—­I couldn’t have gotten away with the information.  One of us had to go out, and I had the power to decide which.  I chose that O’Hagan should be the one.  He was a man steeped in crime.  I am not.”

“You killed him?”

“I am a very poor talker if I have conveyed another meaning.  I tracked him into the mountains.  He shot me twice before I could get my hands on him.  I twisted the truth out of him, and then as I was about to faint like a school-girl, and as my information was precious, I flung him over a cliff.  If I hadn’t, you see, he could have fixed me while I was unconscious.”

The man’s voice was very quiet, very matter-of-fact.  Wilmot stared at him with a sort of wondering horror, for he knew that the man was telling the truth.

“He shot you twice.  That was some time yesterday.  You’ve seen a doctor?”

“There was none, and I had to ride all night to get here.”

“Are you badly hit?”

The stranger drew back his coat and disclosed a shirt twice perforated over the abdomen and dark with dried and thickening blood.  “Please don’t try to do anything.  There’s no help.  The damage is where it doesn’t show.  Only listen, please, and believe, and be frank with me.”

Wilmot nodded gravely.  “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but you are hurt, and if you’d rather talk than try to do something about it, of course I’ll listen.”

[Illustration:  “I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff”]