“Well, it started me to wondering, anyway,” went on the sheriff, ignoring Garner's interruption, “and I set to work to watch. I hung about the restaurant across the street, smoking a cigar and keeping my eyes on that store. After awhile I saw Bob Smith go in the store and then Wade Tingle. Then I saw a big tray of grub covered with a white cloth sent from the Johnston House, and Bob Smith come to the door and took it in, sending the coon that fetched it back to the hotel. Well, I waited a minute or two and then sauntered, careless-like, across and went in. I chatted awhile with Bob and Wade, noticing, I remember, that for a newspaper man Wade seemed powerful indifferent about gathering items about what had happened, and that Blackburn was busy folding up a tangled lot of short pieces of white sheeting. All this time I was looking about to see where that waiter full of grub had gone. Not a sign of it was in sight, but in a lull in the talk I heard the clink of crockery somewhere below me, and I caught on. Boys, I'm here to tell you that never did a condemned soul feel as I felt. I went out in the open air praying, actually praying, that what I suspected might be true. I started for the jail and on the way met Burt Barrett. I asked him for particulars, and when he said that the Hillbend mob had left word that nobody need even look for the remains of the boy my heart gave a big jump in the same way as it had when that clip and saucer collided in that cellar. I asked Burt if he noticed which way the mob tuck the prisoner, and he said down towards town. I asked him if it wasn't odd for Hillbend folks to go that way to hang a man, and he agreed that it was. Well, to make a long story short, I was on to your gigantic ruse, and God above knows what a load it took off of me. You had saved me, Carson--you had saved me from toting that crime to my grave. I knew you were the ringleader, for I didn't know anybody else who would have thought of such a plan. You are a sight younger man than I am, but you stuck to principle, while I shirked principle, duty, and everything else. Doing all that was hurting your political chances, and you knew it, but you stuck to what was right all the same.” “Yes, he certainly has queered his political chances,” Garner said, grimly, with a look of wonder in his eye over the sheriff's frank confession. “But you, I think you said, were a Wiggin man,” he finished.