"Well, for one thing, he seems so--well, _cold_. Like he was a side-winder or a rattlesnake waitin' for a packrat to come by. He always seems to be figurin'--calculatin'. He don't smile much, and when he does, it don't look right on him." "That funny accent of his don't help none," the sheriff chimed in. "It ain't that he can't speak good English, but it sounds funny, the way he says it." "Been here very long?" Brek asked casually. "'Bout three years, is all. Done right well by himself, considerin' he didn't have much when he came." Chuck said: "After bein' robbed and all, it's a caution how he done so well." Then he laughed. "That was downright funny, when you come to think of it." "Yeah," the sheriff said, grinning. "Him and his sister showed up one night, naked as jaybirds. A couple of owlhoots had robbed 'em and stripped 'em of everything they had. No horse, no clothes, no nothin'. He was lucky, in a way, though. He had a money-belt on him that he managed to hide in a mesquite bush while the bandits wasn't lookin'. "I was sittin' in my office that night, when I heard a knock at the back door. I opened it, and there was John Sager, all dressed up in his birthday suit and nothin' more. Course, I didn't know who he was--" Brek listened closely to the sheriff's story. It all fits in. Sagginer hadn't had time to prepare himself for this era; his speech was strange, and his clothes even stranger. So he'd taken off his clothes and pretended to have been robbed. And his sister? "What's his sister like?" he asked. "Pretty," Chuck said, "but she's not too bright. Goes around in a daze most of the time." _Hypnotized!_ Brek thought. That settled it. * * * * * Twenty-four hours later, Brek had all the information he needed. Sagginer had a double plot in mind--one which would both set him up permanently and at the same time eliminate any danger from the Time Patrol. Sagginer knew, of course, where the Great Silver Vein was at Chloride Flats. It wasn't due to be discovered until 1973, but if "Sager" found it, he'd not only be a rich man--he would so change history that the Time Patrol would be unable to reach him. He would divert the time-stream radically by the discovery of such a vast amount of silver. Brek had presumably spent the night at the Murray Hotel, but he had actually slipped out of his room unseen and made an excursion on foot up Palo Alto Mountain to the big house Sager had erected there. It was tightly guarded. There would be no chance of getting in there without creating a major disturbance. Cautiously, he crept completely around the house, looking for a break in the guard network. There wasn't any. In order to get inside, he'd have to get himself invited in. But how? He returned to the Hotel, headed from there to the Casa Loma, and was sitting in the bar drinking a beer, mulling the problem over, when Chuck came in.