“Hmp!” grunted the rancher suspiciously.  “That’s what you say, but you’re not the whole works.”

Kirby offered a chair and a cigar.  He sat down on the bed himself.  “Better spill your story to me, Olson.  Two heads are better than one,” he said carelessly.

The Swede’s sullen eyes bored into him.  Before that frank and engaging smile his doubts lost force.  “I got to take a chance.  Might as well be with you as any one.”

The Wyoming man struck a match, held it for the use of his guest, then lit his own cigar.  For a few moments they smoked in silence.  Kirby leaned back easily against the head of the bed.  He did not intend to frighten the rancher by hurrying him.

“When Cunningham worked that crooked irrigation scheme of his on Dry Valley, I reckon I was one of them that hollered the loudest.  Prob’ly I talked foolish about what all I was gonna do about it.  I wasn’t blowin’ off hot air either.  If I’d got a good chance at him, or at Hull either, I would surely have called for a showdown an’ gunned him if I could.  But that wasn’t what I came to Denver for.  I had to arrange about gettin’ my mortgage renewed.”

He stopped and took a nervous puff or two at the cigar.  Kirby nodded in a friendly fashion without speaking.  He did not want by anything he might say to divert the man’s mind from the track it was following.

“I took a room at the Wyndham because the place had been recommended to me by a neighbor of mine who knew the landlady.  When I went there I didn’t know that either Cunningham or Hull lived next door.  That’s a God’s truth.  I didn’t.  Well, I saw Hull go in there the very day I got to town, but the first I knew yore uncle lived there was ten or maybe fifteen minutes before he was killed.  I wouldn’t say but what it was twenty minutes, come to that.  I wasn’t payin’ no attention to time.”

Olson’s eyes challenged those of his host.  His suspicion was still smoldering.  An unhappy remark, a look of distrust, might still have dried up the stream of his story.  But he found in that steady regard nothing more damnatory than a keen, boyish interest.

“Maybe you recollect how hot those days were.  Well, in my cheap, stuffy room, openin’ on an air-shaft, it was hotter ’n hell with the lid on.  When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I went out into the corridor an’ down it to the fire escape outside the window.  It was a lot cooler there.  I lit a stogie an’ sat on the railin’ smokin’, maybe for a quarter of an hour.  By-an’-by some one come into the apartment right acrost the alley from me.  I could see the lights come on.  It was a man.  I saw him step into what must be the bedroom.  He moved around there some.  I couldn’t tell what he was doin’ because he didn’t switch on the light, but he must ‘a’ been changin’ to his easy coat an’ his slippers.  I know that because he came into the room just opposite the fire escape where I was sittin’ on the rail.  He threw on the lights, an’ I saw him plain.  It was Cunningham, the old crook who had beat me outa fifteen hundred dollars.”