"Yes. I fired at Northrup as he rushed me."
"Um-hu," assented Jones, impudent unbelief in his eye. "At Northrup or
at Macdonald."
"What do you think I did with the money, then? Did I eat it?"
"Not so you could notice it. Since you put it to me flat-foot, you gave
it to your pardners. You didn't want it. They did. They have got the
horse too--and they're hitting the high spots to make their get-away."
Elliot was locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was
furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his
anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had
done such a thing. And Sheba--would she accept as true this weight of
circumstantial evidence that was piling up against him?
It could all be explained so easily. And yet--the facts fitted like
links of a chain to condemn him. He went over them one by one. The
babbling tongue of Selfridge that had made common gossip of the
impending tragedy in which he and Macdonald were the principals--his
purchase of the automatic--his public meeting with two known enemies of
the Scotchman, during which he had been seen to give them money--his
target practice with the new revolver--the unhappy chance that had taken
him out to Seven-Mile Creek Camp the very day of the robbery--his casual
questions of the miners--even the finding of the body by him.
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