Galloway and Antone alone were put under arrest, the others merely
advised to be on hand if they were wanted later. Galloway coolly
demanded the charge against him.
"Resisting an officer is as good as any right now," snapped Cutter.
As quiet claimed the town again Caleb Patten became the most important
figure in San Juan. At such moments he seemed to swell visibly. He
drove the curious from the room while he examined the unconscious
sheriff and, when he had finished, merely shook his head, looked grave,
and refused to commit himself. He ordered Norton undressed and put to
bed, went down the street to see Kid Rickard, probed the wound in the
upper chest, ordered him to bed, and returned to Norton at the hotel.
"Well?" asked John Engle who had arrived, talked with Struve, and now
looked anxiously to Patten. Patten shrugged.
"Heavy-caliber bullet ripped along the side of his head," he said
thoughtfully. "I am going to make a second examination now. Doubtless
just the shock stunned him. That or striking his head as he pitched
forward; there's another slight wound, a scalp wound, showing where his
head hit as he fell."
A moment later Tom Cutter came in hastily, stood for a little staring
with frowning, troubled eyes at the quiet form on the bed, and went
away, tugging at his lip, his frown deepening. He had his hands full
to-night, had Tom Cutter, and no one but himself knew how he wanted Rod
Norton to tell him just what to do, to show him the way to make no
mistake. Leaving the room he had gone no farther than the front door
when he swung about and returned.
"May I have a word with you, Mr. Engle?" he asked.
Engle nodded and followed him silently. Out in the street, in the full
light of Struve's porch-lamp, Cutter stopped, glancing about him to
make sure that he was not overheard.
"You know all about the shooting of Brocky Lane up in the mountains,"
he said hurriedly. "Rod told me you did. Well, I just gathered in
Moraga!"
"Moraga?" muttered Engle. "He has seen Galloway, then? And told him
all about our knowing the rifles were cached in the old caves?"
"I found him at the Casa Blanca," said Cutter, the worried look in his
eyes. "Somebody shot out the light when the mix-up started, you know.
I've a notion it was Moraga. He was in one of the little
card-rooms . . . putting on his shoes! I got his gun; he'd fired just
one shot. The muzzle of it was bloody."
"If he has told Galloway. . . ."
"But I don't believe he has. Struve says that just as Norton started
things he saw a man run in from the cottonwoods and duck into the
house. It was Struve's job to see that nobody got out and he let him
go by. If it wasn't Moraga, who was it? And, when I grabbed him just
now, the first thing he said was: 'I want to talk with Galloway.'"
"You didn't let him?" demanded Engle quickly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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