“Both,” replied Whitey.  “You seem sort of pleased, Sandersen?”

“I knowed that Sinclair would come to a bad end,” said Sandersen more soberly.

“Why, I thought they said you cottoned to him when the boys was figuring he might have had something to do with Quade?”

“Me?  Well, yes, for a minute.  But out at the necktie party, Whitey, I kept watching him.  Thinks a lot more’n he says, and gents like that is always dangerous.”

“Always,” replied Whitey.

“But it’s the last time Sinclair’ll show his face in Sour Creek—­alive,” said Sandersen.

“If he does show his face alive, it’ll be a dead face pronto.  You can lay to that.”

Sandersen seemed to turn this fact over and over in his mind, with immense satisfaction.

“And yet,” pursued the storekeeper, “think of a full-grown man breaking the law to save such a skinny little shrimp of a gent as Jig?  Eh?  More like a pretty girl than a boy, Jig is.”

Cartwright exclaimed, and both of the others turned toward him.

“Here’s the gun for me,” he said huskily, “and that gun belt—­filled—­and this holster.  They’ll all do.”

“And a handy outfit,” said Whitey.  “That gun’ll be a friend in need!”

“What makes you think they’ll be a need?” asked Cartwright, with such unnecessary violence that the others both stared.  He went on more smoothly:  “What was you saying about a girl-faced gent?”

“The schoolteacher—­he plugged a feller named Quade.  Sinclair got him clean away from Sheriff Kern.”

“And what sort of a looking gent is Sinclair?  Long, brown, and pretty husky-looking, with a mean eye?”

“You’ve named him!  Where’d you meet up with him?”

“Over in the hills yonder, just where the north trail comes over the rise.  They was sitting down under a tree resting their hosses when I come along.  I got into an argument with this Sinclair—­Long Riley, he called himself.”

“Riley’s his first name.”

“We passed some words.  Pretty soon I give him the lie!  He made a reach for his gun.  I told him I wasn’t armed and dared him to try his fists.  He takes off his belt, and we went at it.  A strong man, but he don’t know nothing about hand fighting.  I had him about ready to give up and begging me to quit when this Jig, this girl-faced man you talk about—­he pulls a gun and slugs me in the back of the head with it.”

Removing his sombrero he showed on the back of his head the great welt which had been made when he struck the ground with the weight of Sinclair on top of him.  It was examined with intense interest by the other two.

“Dirty work!” said Sandersen sympathetically.

The storekeeper said nothing at all, but began to fold up a bolt of cloth which lay half unrolled on the counter.

“It knocked me cold,” continued Cartwright, “and when I come to, they wasn’t no sign nor trace of ’em.”