"I don't know why 'twas, but right then and there there popped into my head something that happened once up in Nevada when I was a kid livin' with my folks just outside of Carson City. A fellow in Carson that had a glass eye hired a lot of Piute Indians to clean up a piece of ground for him--get the rocks and stumps out, you know. Well, them Piutes would work along all right as long as he stood right over them, but the minute he'd go away they'd every last single one of 'em lay down and take a nap. So finally he got an idea. He took his glass eye out of the socket and set it on a stump facing down the field and he says to old Johnson Sides, the Peacemaker of the Piutes, who could speak English and acted as interpreter for the gang, he says to him: "'You tell your bunch that I'm goin' away a little while, but I'm leavin' my eye behind me to watch and see that none of 'em don't loaf on the job.' "And old Johnson translated it and he put off somewheres. Well, sir, it worked fine for several days. Every time he quit the job he left his eye behind him on the stump. And every time a buck felt like loafing he'd look around and see that glass eye glarin' his way, or anyhow seemin' to, and he'd duck his head and spit on his hands and go to it again. "But one day the boss came back and every blamed Indian in sight was stretched out on the ground snorin' to beat thunder. One smart one had slipped up behind the glass eye and slipped an empty tomato can down over it so it couldn't spy on 'em. And so when I seen your false teeth I thought of that Carson City feller's false eye, only his was covered up with an old tin can and yours was settin' out in the open, tellin' me things. "For one thing they was tellin' me I maybe might be right on the suspicions I'd had about them tracks up above. First, though, I asked some questions without lettin' on to anybody what I had in my mind. A detective on a case don't go round blabbin' his business to everybody in sight, you know. I found out Hurley never had a bad tooth in his head. So this plate must belong to the fellow that was with him, which was you. That was point number one. "I found out what size foot Hurley had and what kind of a boot he was wearin.' Point number two: them fake tracks up above couldn't have been made by him. They must have been made by you. Question then was, why should you want to sneak out of that basin and duck your nut without spreadin' the word? Says I to myself, 'That's for me to find out.' So havin' quietly confisticated that plate for evidence, I climbed up to the sandy stretch of the trail without bein' noticed particular by any of the party and I made certain I hadn't been wrong in the first place about them tracks." "You keep harping on that," said Chaney with irritation. "What was wrong with those tracks? Mind you, I'm not admitting anything nor confessing anything, but I'm asking you what was wrong there?" The under-sheriff grinned in appreciation of his own shrewdness.