“The proof seems good,” the scout admitted, “so far as it goes.” Young Wilkins continued to walk about the room nervously, in spite of the scout’s invitation to him to sit down. “Barlow,” he went on, “intended to get permission to lead a small force over into the Moonlight Mountains. There was a disturbance to be made there, to give him an excuse, and he felt sure he could get the colonel to send him. Well, when he got there he meant to scheme in some way to get those Cheyennes involved and slaughtered, and he expected to get hold of that store of gold belonging to the old medicine man.” The scout’s interest had quickened. “Perhaps you know Smallpox Dave?” said Wilkins. “I have heard of him,” was the answer. “Well, he’s a borderman, a sort of renegade, I take it. Barlow was going to have Smallpox Dave slip over into the Moonlight Mountains and there start the initial trouble which was to give him an excuse for being sent there. So he had some talk with Dave; and then, later, wrote him a letter. At the time he wrote that letter he wrote another.” “To Smallpox Dave?” “No, to a girl named May Arlington, who lives out on the prairie here with her father. Barlow is in love with the girl, but he didn’t get on well with her; and this letter had something to do with that. She turned him down a week or so ago.” “From what you have told me of him I judge she did the right thing.” “Yes, she did. But about these letters. I was to be the messenger who was to carry them.” “Then you were in the thing, too?” said the scout, looking hard at him. Wilkins turned toward him, trembling and white-faced. “Yes,” he admitted, “I was. I had got down that low, by degrees. I tried to tell you about it, and how it started in my gambling mania and the debt I owed him. I was helping him in this thing; or, rather, was running some errands for him in connection with it.” “And if those gold nuggets of the medicine man were secured I suppose you were to have had some of them?” “No; not so far as I know. Barlow made no promises to me. He said he wanted me to help him; and--well, I had so far weakened, under the threats of disgrace he held over me, that lately I had taken to doing anything he told me to, without stopping to ask questions about it. And so I was to carry those letters. They were left on a table by Barlow, who had been called from his room in a hurry. I got them mixed; and the letter with the nugget, intended for Smallpox Dave, I threw out to the girl as I passed the house where she lives. And the other letter I carried on to Smallpox Dave--the letter which rightly belonged to the girl.” “Yes, I see.” “It’s a long story, and the rest of it I’ll make short. “The theft of the nugget from the colonel’s room was discovered. In some way it was believed that a man from outside did the work. In the search that was made, the soldiers--pack of fools that they were!--struck my trail, and followed it.”