“It was a case of jealousy between Ward and Benson,” she explained. “Benson came down to the Casino, and threatened to kill me there, because Ward had been to see me. Then Ward got mad, when I told him about it, and swore he would kill Benson, or tell the authorities who Benson really was. He didn’t like Benson, and he didn’t like Juniper Joe; and he thought Juniper was the biggest scoundrel of the two. There had been bad blood between them a long time.” “Aw! Go ahead with yer lies!” Juniper Joe snarled at her, giving her baleful glances. “Make up some good ones while you’re at it.” “I’m going to tell the truth,” she said; “they can’t do anything with me, for I’m not mixed up in the thing, except that Ward came to see me, and he and Benson quarreled about it. I’ll tell the whole thing, you murderer; you killed Ward, and I’ll get even with you by blabbing everything!” She “blabbed.” According to her statement, Tim Benson had discovered that Buffalo Bill was hot on his trail, and was coming to Blossom Range, where Benson had been doing a lot of hold-up work recently. To throw him off the track, he and Juniper Joe, who was secretly his partner in crime, concocted the dazzling scheme of the “jubilee” wedding, when Juniper Joe pretended to marry Tim Benson, who was posing as Mrs. Rafferty, the widow from the East. No one could deny that the thing had been cleverly carried out; the whole of Blossom Range had been neatly hoodwinked. It was Juniper Joe’s plan, after that, to have the gold shipments sent out by the way of Eagle Gap, in charge of the prospectors. He and Benson held them up there, killing one and wounding the other. They got safely back to the cabin with the plunder, after bringing the burros near to the town, and then turning them loose in the hills. Ward had knowledge of all this, and had told the woman about it when he called on her. He had said that he meant to kill Benson; and there could not be any doubt, from evidence gathered later, that in the night, or just before morning, he had gone to the cabin, where he had attacked Juniper Joe and Benson. Probably, as he had left Benson unconscious, he believed he had killed him. Benson had already been wounded in the head by a bullet from the baron’s revolver. In the fight with Ward, the latter had rapped Benson on the head, opening the unhealed wound made by the baron’s bullet; thus producing a condition which had puzzled Buffalo Bill; who, it will be recalled, had found Juniper Joe and his “wife” in the cabin that morning; Juniper Joe tied and gagged, and his “wife” unconscious on the floor. Ward had got out with some of the nuggets in buckskin bags, a part of the loot from the burro shipments; and had tried to cache them at the time he was followed and seen by the baron.