The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the first inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting voice. Now, as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the back of a chair and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they looked the picture of schoolboys caught by their master in a conspiracy. How long had he been there? How much had he heard? Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they were, his confident contempt still cowed the very men who were planning his destruction. A minute before they had been full of loud threats and boastings; now they could only search each other’s faces sullenly for a cue. “Celebrating Chaves’ return from manana land, I reckon. That’s the proper ticket. I wonder if we couldn’t afford to kill another of Collins’ fatted calves.” Mr. Hardman, not enjoying the derisive raillery, took a hand in the game. “I expect the boys hadn’t better touch the sheriff’s calves, now you and him are so thick.” “We’re thick, are we?” Leroy’s indolent eyes narrowed slightly as they rested on him. “Ain’t you? It sure seemed that way to me when I looked out of that mesquit wash just above Eldorado Springs and seen you and him eating together like brothers and laughing to beat the band. You was so clost to him I couldn’t draw a bead on him without risking its hitting you.” “Spying, eh?” “If that’s the word you want to use, cap. And you were enjoying yourselves proper.” “Laughing, were we? That must have been when he told me how funny you looked in the ‘altogether’ shedding false teeth and information about hidden treasure.” “Told you that, did he?” Mr. Hardman incontinently dropped repartee as a weapon too subtle, and fell back on profanity. “That’s right pat to the minute, cap, what you say about the information he leaks,” put in Neil. “How about that information? I’ll be plumb tickled to death to know you’re carrying it in you vest pocket.” “And if I’m not?” “Then ye are a bigger fool than I had expected sorr, to come back here at all,” said the Irishman truculently. “I begin to think so myself, Mr. Reilly. Why keep faith with a set of swine like you?” “Are you giving it to us that you haven’t got those papers?” Leroy nodded, watching them with steady, alert eyes. He knew he stood on the edge of a volcano that might explode at any moment. “What did I tell yez?” Reilly turned savagely to the other disaffected members of the gang. “Didn’t I tell yez he was selling us out?” Somehow Leroy’s revolver seemed to jump to his hand without a motion on his part. It lay loosely in his limp fingers, unaimed and undirected. “_Say that again, please_.”