I got to say!" He
wiped his forehead and glared. "Then s'pose you explain somethin'! I'm
ridin' through town a while back, when the telephone gal sticks her
head outen the winder an' squeals: 'Git to the Cunnel's a-flyin',
Jess--they say Dale Dawson's done kilt Tusk Potter!'"

"That's all right," Dale said.

"Keep yoh 'pinions to yohse'f till I ask for 'em! I put my hawse's belly
to the ground an' we've gone 'bout two mile, when young McElroy comes
chargin' up behind a-yellin' for me to stop." 'What's the matter?' I
asks, pullin' 'round an' facin' 'im. 'You've got a blame good hawse,
Jess,' he grins, 'I thought I couldn't ketch you!!' Then he comes up
clost an' says: "That message come wrong!' 'How d'you know?' I asks. 'I
heerd it,' he says, 'an' Dale ain't never kilt Tusk!' 'Then who did?' I
asks agin. 'Me,' he says."

Jane's nails bit into the palms of her hands as she sprang up,
breathlessly listening. The sheriff went on:

"I looks at 'im an' seen he was cold sober, but I knowed the other
message come straight, too. So I says: 'Then you're under 'rrest; go
back an' set on the cou'thouse steps till I come from the Cunnel's,' I
says. 'If you go out thar I won't stay,' he says. 'You will if I asks
you, Brent,' I says, 'No, Jess, I'll be damned if I do,' he says. Wall,
we argyed, an' he was so pig-headed I thought I'd have to shoot 'im
right thar; but arter 'while he says he'll go back an' set, an' then I
come on. Now I want to know what kind of fun you fellers is tryin' to
git outen me!"

Little did the sheriff, Dale or Jane know that Brent rode back to town
like mad, threw himself from his horse and dashed up the stair leading
to the telephone office above the drug-store. He fairly bounded in upon
Miss Gregget, crying:

"Quick! Give me the Colonel's!"

While she was inserting a plug and turning a crank--for Buckville's
central switchboard was many years behind the times--he unceremoniously
lifted the operator's head-set from her coiled hair and fitted it upon
his own head. Several times she spun the little crank, breathlessly
repealing:

"I've just been trying them, but they must have left the receiver off!"

"Wait!" he whispered.

The receiver was still off the hook at Arden, just as Jane had left it
dangling, and now he was listening--listening to interrupted portions of
a scene being enacted in that far away library, and illogically hoping
one of its actors might pass near enough the instrument for him