Soon as ever I mentioned
twenty-five hundred, he loosened up right smart."
"Well? Did he know where Foy was?"
"No; but he knew of the place where I judge Foy is, this very yet.
Gosh!" said Nueces River in deep disgust, "it beats hell what men will
do for a little dirty money! Seems there's a cave near the top of the
least of them two buttes--the roughest one--a cave with two mouths,
one right on the big top. Nobody much knows where it is, only the V H
outfit."
Pringle had edged across the room. He now plucked at Bell Applegate's
sleeve.
"Say, is that right about that reward--twenty-five hundred?" he
whispered. His eyes glistened.
"Forty-five," said Bell behind his hand. "The Masons, they put up a
thousand, and Dick's old uncle--that would have let Dick starve or
work--he tacked on a thousand more. Dead or alive!" He looked down
at Pringle's face, at Pringle's working fingers, opening and shutting
avariciously; he sneered. "Don't you wish you may get it? S-sh! Hear
what the old man's saying."
During the whispered colloquy the old ranger had kept on:
"There's where he is, a twenty-to-one shot! He'll lay quiet, likely,
thinkin' we'll miss him. Brush growin' over both the cave mouths,
Hargis says, so you might pass right by if you didn't know where to
look.
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