ny. "I'm sorry about the dead man, of course. But
I didn't know him, and you can't expect me to feel like you do. I'm
right as rain--but I can't say as much for you. You look like you'd
been dragged through a knothole."

"No sleep. I went back to Garfield, made medicine, and hurried back
here. Seventy-five miles now, after a day's work and not much sleep
the night before. I thought you'd be having your prelim, you see, or
I'd have waited over. Didn't know that Judge Hinkle was out of town."

"Any news?"

"Yes," said Hobby, "there is."

He held out his hand. Johnny took it, through the bars.

"You don't think I killed your friend, then?"

"I know you didn't. But, man--we can't prove it. Not one scrap of
evidence to bring into court. Just a sensing and a hunch--against a
plain, straight, reasonable story, with three witnesses. You are It."

"Now you can't sometimes most always ever tell," said Johnny.
"Besides, you're tired out. Get you a chair and tell it to me. I've
been asleep. Also, you and I have had some few experiences not in
common before our trails crossed yesterday. I may do a little sensing
myself. Tell it to me."

"Well, after Caney's crowd told us Adam was killed in Redgate, Uncle
Pete and a bunch went up there hotfoot. They found everything just
about as Caney told it. There was your track, with one shoe gone, and
Adam's horse with the bridle dragging--till he broke it off--"

"And where those two tracks crossed," interrupted Johnny, "those
fellows had ridden over the trail till you couldn't tell which was on
top."

Hobby stared.

"How did you know that? Uncle Pete was all worked up over it. I never
heard him so powerful before, on any subject."

"You're tired out, so you can't see straight," said Johnny. "Also, I
know that when I came down Redgate there were no fresh tracks heading
this way. If those three men killed Forbes and want to saw it off on
me--then they confused that trail on purpose. If they didn't kill
Forbes, and muddled the tracks that way, they're half-wits. And
they're not half-wits. Go on."

"They found poor old Adam and your fire. They pushed on ahead to read
all the sign they could before dark. Up in the park there'd been a
heap of riding back and forth. Just at dark they found where a bunch
of cattle had been headed and had gone over the divide into Deadman
and gone on down. Then the rain came--and the rest is mud."

"Yes. It rained. There was a little low gap to the no