o his query Pringle launched another:

"Speaking of faces, Creagan, old sport, what's happened to you and
your nose? You look like someone had spread you on the minutes." He
eyed Creagan with solicitous interest.

Mr. Creagan's battered face betrayed emotion. Pringle's shameless
mendacity shocked him. But it was Creagan's sorry plight that he must
affect never to have seen this insolent Pringle before. The sheriff's
face mottled with wrath. Pringle reflected swiftly: The sheriff's rage
hinted strongly that he was in Creagan's confidence and hence was no
stranger to last night's mishap at the hotel; their silence proclaimed
their treacherous intent.

On the other hand, these two, if not the others, knew very well that
Pringle had left town with Foy and had probably stayed with him; that
the Major must know all that Foy and Pringle knew. Evidently, Pringle
decided, these two, at least, could expect no direct information from
their persistent questionings; what they hoped for was unconscious
betrayal by some slip of the tongue. As for young Breslin, Pringle
had long since sized him up for what the Major knew him to be--a
good-hearted, right-meaning simpleton. In the indifferent-seeming
Anastacio, Pringle recognized an unknown quantity.

That, for a certainty, Christopher Foy had not killed Marr, was a
positive bit of knowledge which Pringle shared only with the murderer
himself and with that murderer's accomplices, if any. So much was
plain, and Pringle felt a curiosity, perhaps pardonable, as to who the
murderer really was.

Duty and inclination thus happily wedded, Pringle set himself to goad
ferret-eyed Creagan and the heavy-jawed sheriff into unwise speech.
And inattentive Anastacio had a shrewd surmise at Pringle's design.
He knew nothing of the fight at the Gadsden House, but he sensed an
unexplained tension--and he knew his chief.

"And this man, too--what about him?" said Breslin, regarding Pringle
with a puzzled face. "Granted that the Major might have a motive for
shielding Foy--he may even believe Foy to be innocent--why should this
stranger put himself in danger for Foy?"

"Here, now--none of that!" said Pringle with some asperity. "I may
be a stranger to you, but I'm an old friend of the Major's. I'm his
guest, eating his grub and drinking his baccy; if he sees fit to tell
any lies I back him up, of course. Haven't you got any principle at
all? What do you think I am?"

"I know what you are," said th