A young man lay stretched full length on the loading board, with a broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes. He wore a gray flannel shirt and corduroy trousers thrust into half-leg laced boots. At the sound of voices he turned lazily on his side and watched the members of the posse swing wearily from their saddles. An amiable smile, not wholly free of friendly derision, lit his good-looking face. “Oh, you sheriff,” he drawled. Collins swung round, as if he had been pricked with a knife point. He stared an instant before he let out a shout of welcome and fell upon the youth. “Bucky, by thunder!” The latter got up nimbly in time to be hospitably thumped and punched. He was a lithe, slender young fellow, of medium height, and he carried himself lightly with that manner of sunburned competency given only by the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoors West. While the men reloaded the car he and the sheriff stood apart and talked in low tones. Collins told what he knew, both what he had seen and inferred, and Bucky heard him to the end. “Yes, it ce’tainly looks like one of Wolf Leroy’s jobs,” he agreed. “Nobody else but Leroy would have had the nerve to follow you right up to the depot and put the kibosh on sending those wires. He’s surely game from the toes up. Think of him sittin’ there reading the newspaper half an hour after he held up the Limited!” “Did he do that, Bucky?” The sheriff’s tone conceded admiration. “He did. He’s the only train robber ever in the business that could have done it. Oh, the Wolf’s tracks are all over this job.” “No doubt about that. I told you I recognized York Neil by him being shy that trigger finger I fanned off down at Tombstone. Well, they say he’s one of the Wolf’s standbys.” “Yes. I warned him two months ago that if he didn’t break away he’d die sudden. Somehow I couldn’t persuade him he was an awful sick man right then. You saw four of these hold-ups in all, didn’t you, Val?” “Four’s right. First off Neil, then the fellow I took to be the Wolf. After he went out a bowlegged fellow came in, and last a slim little kid that was a sure enough amateur, the way his gun shook.” “Any notion how many more there were?” “I figured out two more. A big gazabo in a red wig held up Frost, the engineer. He knew it was a wig because he saw long black hair peeping out around his neck. Then there must ’a’ been another in charge of blowing up the express car, a Mexican, from the description the messenger gives of him.”