“I’ll come back in a minute with the lantern; I want a further chance to look things over.  Then I’ll put the blanket back and see that not even that charred match gives us away.  And we’d better be eating and getting started.”

With a steaming tin of black coffee before her, a brown piece of bacon between her fingers, she forgot to eat or drink while she listened to Norton’s story.  At the beginning it seemed incredible; then, her thoughts sweeping back over the experiences of these last twenty-four hours, her eyes having before them the picture of a sheriff, grim-faced and determined, a wounded man lying just beyond the fire, the rough, rudely arched walls and ceiling of a cave man’s dwelling about her, she deemed that what Norton knew and suspected was but the thing to be expected.

“Jim Galloway is a big man,” the sheriff said thoughtfully.  “A very big man in his way.  My father was after him for a long time; I have been after him ever since my father’s death.  But it is only recently that I have come to appreciate Jim Galloway’s caliber.  That’s why I could never get him with the goods on; I have been looking for him in the wrong places.

“I estimated that he was making money with the Casa Blanca and a similar house which he operates in Pozo; I thought that his entire game lay in such layouts and a bit of business now and then like the robbing of the Las Palmas man.  But now I know that most of these lesser jobs are not even Galloway’s affair, that he lets some of his crowd like the Kid or Antone or Moraga put them across and keep the spoils, often enough.  In a word, while I’ve been looking for Jim Galloway in the brush he has been doing his stunt in the big timber!  And now. . . .”  The look in Norton’s eyes suggested that he had forgotten the girl to whom he was talking.  “And now I have picked up his trail!”

“And that’s something,” interposed Brocky Lane, a flash of fire in his own eyes.  “Considering that no man ever knew better than Jim Galloway how to cover tracks.”

“You see,” continued Norton, “Jim Galloway’s bigness consists very largely of these two things:  he knows how to keep his hands off of the little jobs, and he knows how to hold men to him.  Bisbee, of Las Palmas, goes down in the Casa Blanca; his money, perhaps a thousand dollars, finds its way into the pockets of Kid Rickard, Antone, and maybe another two or three men.  Jim Galloway sees what goes on and does no petty haggling over the spoils; he gets a strangle-hold on the men who do the job; it costs him nothing but another lie or so, and he has them where he can count on them later on when he needs such men.  Further, if they are arrested, Jim Galloway and Galloway’s money come to the front; they are defended in court by the best lawyers to be had, men are bribed and they go free.  As a result of such labors on Galloway’s part I’d say at a rough guess that there are from a dozen to fifty men in the county right now who are his men, body and soul.