True, Comstock, who seemed to know everything, had said in a matter-of-fact way that it had been Jimmie Clayton who had shot him that night between Juarez and El Paso.  But nothing was proven.  He had long thought of Clayton as a man to whom he owed a debt of gratitude, and now with the man, hunted as he was, his sympathy naturally went out to him, evil-doer as he knew him to be.

Evidently Comstock read what was passing in the cowboy’s mind.

“I’m not asking you to squeal on him, Buck,” he said quietly.  “Look here, I could have taken him in last night if I had wanted to.  I could have got him a week ago if I had wanted him.  But I didn’t want him—­I don’t want him now.  I’m hunting bigger game.”

Still Thornton hesitated, but now his hesitation was brief.  He swung his horse around toward the cabin.

“Let’s ride back, Comstock,” he said shortly.  “I want a good long talk with you.”

Not another word about the matter did either man say as they unsaddled or as they went up the knoll to the cabin.  Not a word until the fragrance of boiling coffee and frying bacon went out to mingle with the freshness of the new day.  Then as they sat at table and Comstock began to soak the biscuits Thornton had made in the bacon gravy, they looked at each other, and their eyes were alike grave and equally stern.

“First thing,” began Comstock, “let me finish my news.  Charley Bedloe was murdered last night.”

“I know.”

“The devil you do?  All right.  Then here’s something else.  His brother, the Kid, they call him, swears that you killed him.”

“I know,” nodded Thornton as quietly as before.

Comstock made no pretence of hiding his surprise.

“I thought you had left before the shooting happened.  I was all over town; no one saw you....”

“Except the Kid.  He did.  He saw me outside the window through which somebody shot Charley.”

Comstock returned his attention to his biscuit and gravy.

“I’m a failure as a news monger,” he grunted.  “Go on.  You tell me.”

And Thornton told him.  Before he had finished Comstock had pushed back his chair and was letting his coffee go cold.  For Thornton had told him not alone of what had happened at the Here’s How Saloon last night, but of the work that Broderick and Pollard were doing, of all of his certainties and his suspicions, of the “planted” evidence he had found in the hay loft, of the missing saddle.  Only he did not mention the name of a girl, and he remembered that Pollard was her uncle and spared him where he could.

“What a game!  By high heaven, what a game!” Comstock pursed his lips into a long whistle.  Then he banged his first down upon the table, his eyes grown wonderfully bright and keen, crying softly, “I’ve got him, I’ve got him at last, and he’s going to pay to the uttermost for all he has done in the last seven years ... and before!  Got him—­by thunder!”