turned away, heading for the sheriff's office at the other end of town. He kicked on the door of the jailer's shack, a few yards from the jail, and roused that individual out of a slumber he believed was alcoholic, and informed him he had a prisoner in his care. The jailer seemed as surprised as the victim was.
No one had followed Corcoran to the jail, and the street was almost deserted, as the people jammed morbidly into the Blackfoot Chief to stare at the bodies and listen to conflicting stories as to just what had happened.
Colonel Hopkins came running up, breathlessly, to grab Corcoran's hand and pump it vigorously.
'By gad, sir, you have the real spirit! Guts! Speed! They tell me the loafers at the bar didn't even have time to dive for cover before it was over! I'll admit I'd ceased to expect much of John's deputies, but you've shown your metal! These fellows were undoubtedly Vultures. That Tom Deal, you've got in jail, I've suspected him for some time. We'll question him--make him tell us who the rest are, and who their leader is. Come in and have a drink, sir!'
'Thanks, but not just now. I'm goin' to find Middleton and report this business. His office ought to be closer to the jail. I don't think much of his jailer. When I get through reportin' I'm goin' back and guard that fellow myself.'
Hopkins emitted more laudations, and then clapped the Texan on the back and darted away to take part in whatever informal inquest was being made, and Corcoran strode on through the emptying street. The fact that so much uproar was being made over the killing of three would-be murderers showed him how rare was a successful resistance to the Vultures. He shrugged his shoulders as he remembered feuds and range wars in his native Southwest: men falling like flies under the unerring drive of bullets on the open range and in the streets of Texas towns. But there all men were frontiersmen, sons and grandsons of frontiersmen; here, in the mining camps, the frontier element was only one of several elements, many drawn from sections where men had forgotten how to defend themselves through generations of law and order.
He saw a light spring up in the sheriff's cabin just before he reached it, and, with his mind on possible gunmen lurking in ambush--for they must have known he would go directly to the cabin from the jail--he swung about and approached the building by a route that would not take him across the bar of light pouring from the window. So it was that the man who came running noisily down the road passed him without seeing the Texan as he kept in the shadows of the cliff. The man was McNab; Corcoran knew him by his powerful build, his slouching carriage. And as he burst through the door, his face was illuminated and Corcoran was amazed to see it contorted in a grimace of passion.
Voices rose inside the cabin, McNab's bull-like roar, thick with fury, and the calmer tones of Middleton. Corcoran hurried forward, and as he approached he heard McNab roar: 'Damn you, Middleton, you've got a lot of explainin' to do! Why didn't you warn the boys he was a killer?'
At that moment Corcoran stepped into the cabin and demanded: 'What's the trouble, McNab?'
The big deputy whirled with a feline snarl of rage, his eyes glaring with murderous madness as they recognized Corcoran.
'You damned--' A string of filthy expletives gushed from his thick lips as he ripped out his gun. Its muzzle had scarcely cleared leather when a Colt banged in Corcoran's right hand. McNab's gun clattered to the floor and he staggered back, grasping his right arm with his left hand, and cursing like a madman.
'What's the matter with you, you fool?' demanded Corcoran harshly. 'Shut up! I did you a favor by not killin' you. If you wasn't a deputy I'd have drilled you through the head. But I will anyway, if you don't shut your dirty trap.'
'You killed Breckman, Red Bill and Curly!' raved McNab; he looked like a wounded grizzly as he swayed there, blood trickling down his wrist and dripping off his fingers.
'Was that their names? Well, what about it?'
'Bill's drunk, Corcoran,' interposed Middleton. 'He goes crazy when he's full of liquor.'
McNab's roar of fury shook the cabin. His eyes turned red and he swayed on his feet as if about to plunge at Middleton's throat.
'Drunk?' he bellowed. 'You lie, Middleton! Damn you, what's your game? You sent your own men to death! Without warnin'!'
'His own men?' Corcoran's eyes were suddenly glittering slits. He stepped back and made a half-turn so that he was facing both men; his hands became claws hovering over his gun-butts.
'Yes, his men!' snarled McNab. 'You fool, he's the chief of the Vultures!'
An electric silence gripped the cabin. Middleton stood rigid, his empty hands hanging limp, knowing that his life hung on a thread no more substantial than a filament of morning dew. If he moved, if, when he spoke, his tone jarred on Corcoran's suspicious ears, guns would be roaring before a man could snap his fingers.
'Is that so?' Corcoran shot at him.
'Yes,' Middleton said calmly, with no inflection in his voice that could be taken as a threat. 'I'm chief of the Vultures.'
Corcoran glared at him puzzled. 'What's your game?' he demanded, his tone thick with the deadly instinct of his breed.
'That's what I want to know!' bawled McNab. 'We killed Grimes for you, because he was catchin' on to things. And we set the same trap for this devil. He knew! He must have known! You warned him--told him all about it!'
'He told me nothin',' grated Corcoran. 'He didn't have to. Nobody but a fool would have been caught in a trap like that. Middleton, before I blow you to Hell, I want to know one thing: what good was it goin' to do you to bring me into Whapeton, and have me killed the first night I was here?'
'I didn't bring you here for that,' answered Middleton.
'Then what'd you bring him here for?' yelled McNab. 'You told us--'
'I told you I was bringing a new deputy here, that was a gunslinging fool,' broke in Middleton. 'That was the truth. That should have been warning enough.'
'But we thought that was just talk, to fool the people,' protested McNab bewilderedly. He sensed that he was beginning to be wound in a web he could not break.
'Did I tell you it was just talk?'
'No, but we thought--'
'I gave you no reason to think anything. The night when Grimes was killed I told everyone in the Golden Eagle that I was bringing in a Texas gunfighter as my deputy. I spoke the truth.'
'But you wanted him killed, and--'
'I didn't. I didn't say a word about having him killed.'
'But--'
'Did I?' Middleton pursued relentlessly. 'Did I give you a definite order to kill Corcoran, to molest him in any way?'
Corcoran's eyes were molten steel, burning into McNab's soul. The befuddled giant scowled and floundered, vaguely realizing that he was being put in the wrong, but not understanding how, or why.
'No, you didn't tell us to kill him in so many words; but you didn't tell us to let him alone.'
'Do I have to tell you to let people alone to keep you from killing them? There are about three thousand people in this camp I've never given any definite orders about. Are you going out and kill them, and say you thought I meant you to do it, because I didn't tell you not to?'
'Well, I--' McNab began apologetically, then burst out in righteous though bewildered wrath: 'Damn it, it was the understandin' that we'd get rid of deputies like that, who wasn't on the inside. We thought you were bringin' in an honest deputy to fool the folks, just like you hired Jim Grimes to fool 'em. We thought you was just makin' a talk to the fools in the Golden Eagle. We thought you'd want him out of the way as quick as possible--'
'You drew your own conclusions and acted without my orders,' snapped Middleton. 'That's all that it amounts to. Naturally Corcoran defended himself. If I'd had any idea that you fools would try to murder him, I'd have passed the word to let him alone. I thought you understood my motives. I brought Corcoran in here to fool the people; yes. But he's not a man like Jim Grimes. Corcoran is with us. He'll clean out the thieves that are working outside our gang, and we'll accomplish two things with one stroke: get rid of competition and make the miners think we're on the level.'
McNab stood glaring at Middleton; three times he opened his mouth, and each time he shut it without
