"Son," he said, abruptly, "you and Dave are hired. You-all are goin' to trail along with this lady and see that she comes out all right. If she's with her husband, there ain't no cause for scandal. But if this De Launay feller gets anyways gay, you-all just puts his light out. You hear me!" "You're shoutin', pop. Which we already signs on with mad'mo'selle. We hunts mines, murderers, or horned toads for her if she says so." Solange laughed, and there was affection in her mirth. "That is splendid, messieurs. I cannot thank you." "You don't need to," growled Dave. "All we asks is a chance to slay this here husband of yours. Which we-all admires to see you a widow." After that Solange set herself to question Wallace regarding her father's death. But he could tell her little she did not know. "We never knows who killed him," he said, after telling how Pierre d'Albret had been found, dying in his wagon, with a sack of marvelously rich ore behind him. "There was some says it was Louisiana, and a coroner's jury over to Maryville brings in a verdict that a way. But I don't know. Louisiana was wild and reckless and he could sure fan a gun, but he never struck me as bein' a killer. Likewise, I never knows him to carry a rifle, and Brandon says he didn't have one when he went out past his ranch. Course, he might have got hold of Pete's gun and used that, but if he did how come that Pete don't know who kills him? "The main evidence against Louisiana lays with old Jim Banker, the prospector. He comes rackin' in about a week later and says he sees Louisiana headin' into Shoestring Canyon about the time Pete was shot. But the trailers didn't find his hoss tracks. There was tracks left by Pete's team and some burro sign, but there wasn't no recent hoss tracks outside o' that." "You say Jim Banker says he saw him?" demanded Sucatash. "Yes." "Huh! That's funny. Jim allows, down in Sulphur Falls, that he don't know nothin' about it. Says he was south of the range, out on the desert at the time." "Reckon he's forgot," said Wallace. "Anyway, if it was Louisiana, he's gone and I reckon he won't come back." "I think it could not have been any one else," said Solange, thoughtfully. "What kind of man was this--this Louisiana?" "Tall, good-lookin' young chap, slim and quick as a rattler. He'd fool you on looks. Came from Louisiana, and gets his name from that and from a sort of coon song he was always singin'. Something about 'My Louisiana--Louisiana Lou!' Don't remember his right name except that it was something like Delaney. Lew Delaney, I think." "He was a dangerous man, you say?" "Well--he was sure dangerous. I've seen some could shake the loads out of a six-gun pretty fast and straight, but I never saw the beat of this feller. Them things gets exaggerated after a time, but if half of what they tell of this fellow was true, he was about the boss of the herd with a small gun.