“Keep on looking around here, like you was tracing up my trail,” he said in a low voice, pointing downward.  “I’ve got something I want to tell yuh, and I want you to listen close and get what I say, because I ain’t apt to repeat it.  And I don’t want that coroner to get the notion we’re talking anything over.  That little play you made with my gun showed that you’ve got hoss sense and ain’t overlooking any bets, and it may be that I’ll have use for yuh before long.  Now listen.”

The sheriff listened, chewing industriously and wandering about while Starr talked.  His hard eyes changed a little, and twice he nodded his head in assent.

“Now you do that,” said Starr at last, with an air of one giving orders.  “And see to it that you get a hearing as soon as possible.  I can’t appear except as a witness, of course, but I want a chance to size up the fellows that take the biggest interest in the trial.  And keep it all on the basis of a straight quarrel, if you can.  You’ll have to fix that up with the prosecuting attorney, if you can trust him that far.”

“I can, Mr. Starr.  He’s my brother-in-law, and he’s the best man we could pick in the county for what you want.  I get you, all right.  There won’t be anything drop about what you just told me.”

“There better hadn’t be anything drop!” Starr told him dryly.  “You’re into something deeper than county work now, ole-timer.  This is Federal business, remember.  Come on back and stall around some more, and let me go on about my own business.  You can get word to me at the Palacia if you want me at the inquest, but don’t get friendly.  I’m just a stock-buyer that happened along.  Keep it that way.”

“I sure will, Mr. Starr.  I’ll do my part.”  The sheriff relapsed into his ruminative manner as he led the way back to the house.  One may guess that Starr had given him something worth ruminating about.

In a few minutes, he told Starr curtly that he could go if he wanted to; and he bettered that by muttering to the coroner that he had a notion to hold the fellow, but that he seemed to have a pretty clear alibi, and they could get him later if they wanted him.  To which the coroner agreed in neighborly fashion.

Starr was saddling Rabbit for another long ride, and he was scowling thoughtfully while he did it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A PAGE OF WRITING

Wind came with the sun and went shrieking across the high levels, taking with it clouds of sand and bouncing tumbleweeds that rolled and lodged for a minute against some rock or bush and then went whirling on again in a fresh gust.  Starr had not ridden two miles before his face began to feel the sting of gravel in the sand clouds.  His eyes, already aching with a day’s hard usage and a night of no sleep, smarted with the impact of the wind.  He fumbled at the band of his big, Texas hat and pulled down a pair of motor goggles and put them on distastefully.  Like blinders on a horse they were, but he could not afford to face that wind with unprotected eyes—­not when so very much depended upon his eyes and his ears and the keenest, coolest faculties of his mind.