"Bat Johnson was makin' it, and Ed White. When they caught me--peekin' in, Bat s-shook me and swore. And--he took me where grandpa--was. He said I was--sneakin' around where I didn't have no--business. And--and grandpa--" Skookum shut his eyes tightly for a moment. "If you please, I--can't tell it--please. It's when grandpa made them cuts--" "You can skip all that," Lark gritted, while the others shuffled their feet uncomfortably, their faces going glum with anger against Palmer for his brutal beating of the boy. "And you needn't to worry; yore grandpa's got more marks than what you've got." "He oughta be strung up by the heels over a slow fire," Tony muttered, with the exaggerated malevolence of one who indulges in strong figures of speech. "Go on, kid. Did you hear what they was goin' to do with it?" "No--only Bat said sinkin' it was easy." "There's the clew to the robbery!" Bud leaned forward, the light of revelation in his eyes. "It's the last thing any one would think of, and about the easiest thing to do. Bat Johnson himself could have hazed those horses across the ford and come back after his pack horse. He could have done the murder and robbery too. If they had a boat hidden under the bank, he could have slipped out of the side door with all the plunder in a sack, packed it on his horse to the river, tossed it into the boat and gone on about his business--which was turning those horses loose and throwing them back across the river. I know where they were tied out of sight in the wash for an hour or two at least. It's so damned simple, Lark, it was practically safe!" "It could be done," Lark agreed, "but they couldn't go on down river and stand a chance of getting anywhere." "They wouldn't need to. Who would see a boat if it slipped down river from Palmer's place and went back the way it came? The farther bank is too rough to ride and too barren for stock to range close, and the current swings that way and cuts close to shore. This side it's boggy wherever you can get to the bank, so all the town stock waters at the ford, where there's a streak of gravel bottom. The willows are thick as the hair on a dog, most places--though of course a man could crowd through to the bank, close enough to throw a bag or two. Why, at three o'clock or a little before, even the kids were all in school down at the other end of town, and every footloose man was locked inside the Elkhorn!" "Palmer was in town, you said." Butch Cassidy's eyes had squinted half shut as his mind focused upon the robbery and shuttled back and forth from scene to scene.