"We--we used to--to play at hold-up when he was a boy," she gasped.
He shook his head. "No, I reckon that won't go. You see, I've found the
piece this was torn from, and I found it in your father's coat. I went
into his room on tiptoe that same hour. The coat was on the bed. He had
gone downstairs for a minute and left it there. Likely he hadn't found a
good chance to burn it yet." Taking the two pieces, he fitted them
together and held them up. "They match exactly, you see. Did your father
used to play with you too when he was a boy?"
He asked this with what seemed to her tortured soul like silken cruelty.
She had no answer, none at least that would avail. Desperately she
snatched at a straw.
"All this isn't proof. It's mere surmise. Some one's tracks were found by
you. How do you know they were father's?"
"I've got that cinched too. I took his boots and measured them."
"Then where's the gold, if he took it? It must be somewhere. Where is
it?"
"Now I'm going up to the head of the class, ma'am. The gold--why, that's a
dead easy one. Near as I can make out, I'm sitting on it right now."
She gave a startled little cry that died in her throat.
"Yes, it's ce'tainly a valuable wash-stand. Chippendale furniture ain't in
it with this kind. I reckon the king of England's is ace high against a
straight flush when it bucks up against yours."
Melissy threw up her cards. "How did you find out?" she asked hoarsely.
The deputy forced her to commit herself more definitely. "Find out what?"
"Where I put the box."
"I'll go back and answer some of those other questions first. I might as
well own up that I knew all the time your father didn't hold up the
stage."
"You did?"
"He's no fool. He wouldn't leave his tracks all over the place where he
had just held up a stage. He might jest as well have left a signed note
saying he had done it. No, that didn't look like Champ Lee to me. It
seemed more likely he'd arrived after the show than before. It wouldn't be
like him, either, to go plowing up the side of the ditch, with his partner
on the other side, making a trail that a blind man could follow in the
night. Soon as I knew Lee and Boone made those tracks, I had it cinched
that they were following the lateral to see where the robber was going.
They had come to the same conclusion I had, that there wasn't any way of
escape except by that empty lateral, assuming it had been empty. The
only point was to find out where the hold-up left the lateral. That's why
they rode one on each side of it. They weren't missing any bets, you
see."