“Jest rampsin’ around, Tommy,” he answered, quietly, making himself a cigarette.  “Jest seein’ what I could see.  You fellers keepin’ pretty busy, ain’t you?”

“Yes.  Too busy to get into trouble, Bill.”  He lay back and sent a new cloud of smoke to soar aloft over the lamp-chimney.  “We haven’t had a visit from a sheriff for six months.”

“Oh, I know you been bein’ good, all right.  If everybody was like you fellers I’d have one lovely, smooth job.  Goin’ to make a go of this thing, ain’t you, Tommy?”

“You bet we are!” cried Garton, enthusiastically.  “There’s nothing can stop us now.  I expect,” with a sharp look at the sheriff, “Swinnerton is feeling a bit shaky of late?”

“Couldn’t say,” replied Wallace, slowly.  “Ain’t seen Oliver for a coon’s age.”

They talked casually of many things, and Tommy Garton, to whom the sheriff’s explanation of the reason for his visit to the Valley was no explanation whatever, sat back against the wall, his head lost in the shadow cast by a coat hanging at the side of the window and between him and the lamp, a frown in his eyes.

“Any time big Bill Wallace drifts this far from his stamping-ground just to look at a ditch I’m dreaming the whole thing,” he told himself, as his eyes never left the sheriff’s face.  “And as for not having seen Swinnerton, that’s a lie.”

Tommy Garton was already scenting something very near the actual truth when the telephone in the front room jangled noisily.

“Want me to answer it?” Wallace was already on his feet.

“Thanks,” Garton told him.  “But I’ve got it fixed so that I can handle it from here.”

He picked up the telephone which was attached to the office instrument and which he kept on the floor at his bedside.  And as he caught the first word he pressed the receiver close to his ear so that no sound from it might escape and reach his alert visitor.

It was the Lark’s voice, tense, earnest, trembling with the import of the Lark’s message.

“That you, Con?  Garton?  Conniston there?  No?  Tell him for me to keep under cover.  Lonesome Pete has jest rode into camp, an’ he’s seen that canary of his, an’ she’s been blowin’ off to him.  Hapgood’s thicker’n thieves with Swinnerton.  He’s put him up to this.  Swinnerton has sent the sheriff after Con.  He’s to jug him for killin’ that Chink!  Get me?  Jest to hold him in the can so’s he can’t work until after October first.  Get me, ’bo?  You’ll put Con wise?  Wallace ought to be there any minute—­”

Garton answered as quietly as he could: 

“All right.  I’ll attend to everything.  Good-by.”  And then, setting the telephone back upon the floor, he took a fresh cigarette from his case, lighted it over the lamp, his face showing calm and unconcerned, and, leaning back, began to think swiftly.