, and the two prospective victims pretended to get
royally drunk so as to allay any suspicion. They played their parts so
well that Coogan was completely taken in. With these two fools drunk it
was a veritable cinch, he thought. Matlock, for some occult reason, was
not so sanguine. He would be more at ease when it was all over and he
shrewdly made arrangements for a hasty departure in case of mishap.

It was nearly ten o'clock before the chicken-hearted sheriff deemed the
two cowpunchers sufficiently drunk enough to take chances with. At that
hour he valiantly descended upon the Red Light saloon with a full posse
and accomplished the arrest with scarcely any difficulty, the only
casualty being to the sheriff's nose, which Red could not help
flattening with the butt of his six-shooter.

Emerging from the jail after the incarceration of his prisoners, the
sheriff encountered Marshall Ballard in charge of two heavily-ironed
captives whom he was exultantly informed were two dangerous
counterfeiters. He overheard the marshall request the turnkey to place
them in the steel dungeon in the basement, as they were important
prisoners and very dangerous characters. He waited until the marshall
rejoined him and invited that official to have a night-cap, remarking
that he was tired and would "hit the hay" without unseemly delay. Could
he have known that at the moment of lifting his glass, Red McVey was
sitting astride of the turnkey's neck, industriously engaged in stuffing
his silk neckerchief into that worthy's capacious mouth, the Angostura
in his cocktail would have turned to gall.

Down at the Palace with exaggerated ostentation Coogan and Matlock were
seated in the main gambling room where their presence was very
conspicuous; Matlock was nervous, but veiled his agitation under a
stream of profanity that grew more and more vicious as the hours dragged
along. His subterfuge did not deceive his more hardened accomplice, who
looked at him with cynical contempt. Could Matlock have known the dark
thoughts brooking in the evil mind of the big gambler, he would have
sworn even more affrightedly.

"That cur is getting dangerous," Big Bart was thinking. "He'd squeal any
time to save his own cursed neck, and he knows too much! I'll attend to
his case when this affair blows over." From under his shaggy eyebrows he
regarded his confederate evilly; of genuine courage he had no dread, but
of this man's moral as well as physical cowardice