Crawford gave a little snort of laughter and covered it hastily with a cough.

“You know it,” went on the quiet man who was a rip-snorter when he got going.  “In regards to that, I’ll say my observation is that when you meet a small man with a steady gray eye it don’t do a bit of harm to spend a lot of time leavin’ him alone.  He may be good-natured, but he won’t stand no devilin’, take it from me.”

The small man with the gray eye eased himself in the saddle and moistened his tongue for a fresh start.  “But I’m not one o’ these foolhardy idiots who have to have wooden suits made for ’em because they don’t know when to stay mum.  You cattlemen have lived a quiet life in the hills, but I’ve been right where the tough ones crowd for years.  I’ll tell you there’s a time to talk and a time to keep still, as the old sayin’ is.”

“Yes,” agreed Crawford.

“Another thing.  I got an instinct that tells me when folks are interested in what I say.  I’ve seen talkers that went right on borin’ people and never caught on.  They’d talk yore arm off without gettin’ wise to it that you’d had a-plenty.  That kind of talker ain’t fit for nothin’ but to wrangle Mary’s little lamb ’way off from every human bein’.”

In front of the riders a group of cottonwoods lifted their branches at a sharp bend in the road.  Just before they reached this turn a bridge crossed a dry irrigating lateral.

“After Harrigan had been shot I came to the ditch for some water, but she was dry as a whistle.  Ever notice how things are that way?  A fellow wants water; none there.  It’s rainin’ rivers; the ditch is runnin’ strong.  There’s a sermon for a preacher,” said the prospector.

The cattleman nodded to Dave.  “I noticed she was dry when I crossed higher up on my way out.  But she was full up with water when I saw her after I had been up to Dick Grein’s.”

“Funny,” commented Sanders.  “Nobody would want water to irrigate at this season.  Who turned the water in?  And why?”

“Beats me,” answered Crawford.  “But it don’t worry me any.  I’ve got troubles of my own.”

They reached the cottonwoods, and the oil prospector pointed out to them just where the stage had been when the bandits first appeared.  He showed them the bushes from behind which the robbers had stepped, the place occupied by the passengers after they had been lined up, and the course taken by the hold-ups after the robbery.

The road ran up a long, slow incline to the Bend, which was the crest of the hill.  Beyond it the wheel tracks went down again with a sharp dip.  The stage had been stopped just beyond the crest, just at the beginning of the down grade.

“The coach must have just started to move downhill when the robbers jumped out from the bushes,” suggested Dave.

“Sure enough.  That’s probably howcome Tim to make a mistake.  He figured he could give the horses the whip and make a getaway.  The hold-up saw that.  He had to shoot to kill or lose the gold.  Bein’ as he was a cold-blooded killer he shot.”  There were pinpoints of light in Emerson Crawford’s eyes.  He knew now the kind of man they were hunting.  He was an assassin of a deadly type, not a wild cowboy who had fired in excitement because his nerves had betrayed him.