“He wouldn’t be fool enough for that,” grumbled the sheriff.

“Fool?  Has any one of you professional man hunters figured yet on hunting for ’em near Sour Creek?  Ain’t you-all been talking long trails—­Colma, and what not?”

They were crushed.

“All you say is true, if Sinclair saddles himself with the tenderfoot.  Might as well tie so much lead around his neck.”

“He’ll do it, though,” said Arizona carelessly.  “I know him.”

It caused a new focusing of attention upon him, and this time Arizona seemed to regret that he stood in the limelight.

“You know him?” asked Joe Stockton softly.

The bright black eyes of the fat man glittered and flickered from face to face.  He seemed to be gauging them and deciding how much he could say—­or how little.

“Sure, I drifted up to this country one season and rode there.  I heard a pile about this Sinclair and seen him a couple of times.”

“How good a man d’you figure him to be with a gun?” asked the sheriff without apparent interest.

“Good enough,” sighed Arizona.  “Good enough, partner!”

Presently the sheriff showed that he was a man capable of taking good advice, even though he could not stamp it as his own original device.

“Boys,” he said, “I figure that what Arizona has said is tolerable sound.  Arizona, what d’you advise next?”

“That we go to Sour Creek pronto—­and sit down and wait!”

A chorus of exclamations arose.

Arizona grew impatient with such stupidity.  “Sinclair come to Sour Creek to do something.  I dunno what he wants, but what he wants he ain’t got yet, and he’s the sort that’ll stay till he does his work.”

“I’ve got in touch with the authorities higher up, boys,” declared Kern.  “Sinclair and Gaspar is both outlawed, with a price on their heads.  Won’t that change Sinclair’s mind and make him move on?”

“You don’t know Sinclair,” persisted Arizona.  “You don’t know him at all, sheriff.”

“Grab your hosses, boys.  I’m following Arizona’s lead.”

Pouring out of the door in silence, the omniscience of Arizona lay heavily upon their minds.  Inside, the sheriff lingered with the wise man from the southland.

“If I was to get in touch with Colma, Fatty, what d’you think they’d be able to tell me about your record up there?”

The olive skin of Arizona became a bleached drab.

“I dunno,” he said rather thickly, and all the while his little black eyes were glittering and shifting.  “Nothing much, Kern.”

His glance steadied.  “By the way, when you had your glove off a while ago I seen something on your wrist that looked like a rope gall, Kern.  If I was to tell the boys that, what d’you figure they’d think about their sheriff?”

It was Kern’s turn to change color.  For a moment he hesitated, and then he dropped a hand lightly on Arizona’s shoulder.