Ware’s Kid swung down before the sheriff’s office and hitched the stallion to a splintered post. With carbine cuddled in his arm, he crossed to stand in the doorway of the office. His roving eyes made out, in the duskiest corner, a small figure squatting against the wall. Ware’s Kid went inside. The squatting one was a boy of fifteen, barefooted, in faded overalls, gingham shirt, and ragged hat upon towy hair. His round eyes were of the palest blue and he had neither brows nor lashes, so that his gaze seemed unwinking, like a snake’s. “Sher’ff?” grunted Ware’s Kid. The boy jerked his head toward the street door and shrugged silently. Ware’s Kid, after a long stare, lounged over to another corner and himself squatted upon his heels. Presently he forgot the boy in the opposite corner. Slowly he produced Durham and brown papers and methodically built a cigarette. This he laid upon the floor before him and rolled another, then a third, fourth, fifth, sixth. They laid in a neat row. He picked up one from the end of the row and lit it. He wondered if he were really to find Dell Spreen here in Dallas. He had not been in Carwell with Sergeant Ames, on the day three months past, when Simeon Rutter and two O-Bar riders had spurred into the tiny, sleepy village, with the word of the murder and robbery of Eph Carson, Rutter’s partner. But the sour-faced ranger sergeant had told him of the crime and of his investigations at El Castillo, the long, low rock wall from behind which Eph Carson had been shot. * * * * * Piecing together the testimony of Rutter and the punchers and adding the result of his own observation, Ames had made a fairly complete story. Carson had been on his way back to the O-Bar with about seven thousand dollars of his and Rutter’s money. During his absence, up Crow Point way, this gunman Spreen had ridden up to the O-Bar and asked for Carson. Told that he was absent, Spreen had said grimly that he would wait. But shortly after breakfast on the day of the murder, while the ranch house was deserted except for two Mex’ cooks, Spreen had disappeared. None had since seen him. Spreen knew that Carson was to return with a large sum of money. The whole ranch had known it. Evidently, said Ames, Spreen had ridden up the Crow Point trail to ambush him where it ran along the rock wall in the desert--El Castillo. He had not waited long--there were but two cigarette stubs in the trampled sand. Eph Carson had come squarely into range of the steadied rifle. Then--two shots and the wizened little cowman had side-slipped from the saddle to sprawl face downward, dead. Having robbed the body, Spreen had vanished as if the ground had swallowed him. Ware’s Kid went over the details of his own investigation. He had located the niche in the wall which had held the murderer’s .44 rifle. He had re-created the murder; had interviewed Rutter and the O-Bar boys.