Arizona was methodically cleaning his gun.  His color had not changed.  There was a singular placidity about all his movements.

“I just hurried up what was coming to him,” said Arizona coolly, as he finished reloading his Colt.  “Sinclair was after him, and that meant he was done for.”

Oddly enough, she found that she was neither very much afraid of the fat man, nor did she loathe him for his crime.  He seemed outside of the jurisdiction of the laws which govern most men.

“You said Sinclair is in jail.”

“Sure, and he is.  But they don’t make jails strong enough in these parts to hold Sinclair.  He’d have come out and landed Sandersen, just as he’s going to come out and land Cartwright.  What has he got agin’ Cartwright, d’you know?”

Oh, it was incredible that he could talk so calmly with the dead man before him.

“I don’t know,” she murmured and drew back.

“Well, take it all in all,” pursued Arizona, “this deal of mine is pretty rotten, but you’d swing just the same for one murder as for two.  They won’t hang you no deader, eh?  And when they come to look at it, this is pretty neat.  Sandersen wasn’t no good.  Everybody knowed that.  But he had one thing I wanted—­which was you and the twenty-five hundred that goes with the gent that brings you into Sour Creek.  So, at the price of one bullet, I get the coin.  Pretty neat, I say ag’in.”

Dropping the revolver back into the holster he patted it with a caressing hand.

“There’s your gun,” went on Arizona, chuckling.  “It’s got a bullet fired out of it.  There’s Sandersen’s gun with no bullet fired, showing that, while he was stalking you, you shot and drilled him.  Here’s my gun with no sign of a shot fired.  Which proves that I just slid in here and stuck you up from behind, while you were looking over the gent you’d just killed.”

He rubbed his hands together, and bracing himself firmly on his stubby legs, looked almost benevolently on Jig.

Not only did she lose her horror of him, but she gained an impersonal, detached interest in the workings of his mind.  She looked on him not as a man but as a monster in the guise of a man.

“Two deaths,” she said quietly, “for your money.  You work cheaply, Arizona.”

Jig’s criticism seemed to pique him.

“How come?”

“Sandersen’s death by your bullet, and mine when I die in the law.  Both to your account, Arizona, because you know I’m innocent.”

“I know it, but a hunch ain’t proof in the eyes of the law.  Besides, I don’t work so cheap.  Sandersen was no good.  He ain’t worth thinking about.  And as for you, Jig, though I don’t like to throw it in your face, as a schoolteacher you may be all right, but as a man you ain’t worth a damn.  Nope.  I won’t give neither of you a thought—­except for Sinclair.”

“Ah?”

“Him and you have been bunkies, if he ever should find out what I done, he’d go on my trail.  Maybe he will anyway.  And he’s a bad one to have on a gent’s trail.”