But there was one person his story did involve, and that was Spiker, the tinhorn, tenderfoot sport of Noches.  During the absence of this young man at the gaming table, Jim and his friend, Sam Weaver, had got into his room with a skeleton key and searched it thoroughly.  They had found, in a suit case, a black mask, a pair of torn and shiny chaps, a gray shirt, a white, dusty sombrero, much the worse for wear, and over three hundred dollars in bills.

“What does he pretend his business is?” Keller asked, when Jim had finished.

“Allows he’s a showfer.  Drives folks around in a gasoline wagon.  That’s the theory, but I notice he turned down a mining man who wanted to get him to run him into the hills on Monday.  Said he hadn’t time.  The showfer biz is a bluff, looks like.”

The nester made no answer.  His eyes, narrowed to slits, were gazing out of the window absently.  Presently he came from deep thought to ask Yeager to hand him the map he would find in his inside coat pocket.  This he spread out on the bed in front of him.  When at last he looked up he was smiling.

“I reckon it’s no bluff, Jim.  He’s a chauffeur, all right, but he only drives out select outfits.”

“Meaning?”

The map lying in front of Keller was one of Noches County.  The nester located, with his index finger, the town of that name, and traced the road from it to Seven Mile.  Then his finger went back to Noches, and followed the old military road to Fort Lincoln, a route which almost paralleled the one to the ranch.

The eyes of Phyllis were already shining with excitement.  She divined what was coming.

“Is this road still travelled, Jim?”

“It goes out to the old fort.  Nobody has lived there for most thirty years.  I reckon the road ain’t travelled much.”

“Strikes through Del Oro Canon, doesn’t it, right after it leaves Noches?”

“Yep.”

“I reckon, Jim, your friend, Spiker, drove a party out that way the afternoon of the holdup,” the nester drawled smilingly.  “By the way, is your friend in the lockup?”

“He sure is.  The deputy sheriff arrested him same night we went through his room.”

“Good place for him.  Well, it looks like we got Mr. Healy tagged at last.  I don’t mean that we’ve got the proof, but we can prove he might have been on the job.”

“I don’t see it, Larry.  I reckon my head’s right thick.”

“I see it,” spoke up Phyllis quickly.

Keller smiled at her.  “You tell him.”

“Don’t you see, Jim?  The motor car must have been waiting for them somewhere after they had robbed the bank,” she explained.

“At the end of Del Oro Canon, likely,” suggested the nester.

She nodded eagerly.  “Yes, they would get into the canon before the pursuit was in sight.  That is why they were not seen by Slim and the rest of the posse.”

Yeager looked at her, and as he looked the certainty of it grew on him.  His mind began to piece out the movements of the outlaws from the time they left Noches.  “That’s right, Phyl.  His car is what he calls a hummer.  It can go like blazes—­forty miles an hour, he told me.  And the old fort road is a dandy, too.”