"There's nothing can
stop us now. I expect," with a sharp look at the sheriff, "Swinnerton
is feeling a bit shaky of late?"
"Couldn't say," replied Wallace, slowly. "Ain't seen Oliver for a
coon's age."
They talked casually of many things, and Tommy Garton, to whom the
sheriff's explanation of the reason for his visit to the Valley was no
explanation whatever, sat back against the wall, his head lost in the
shadow cast by a coat hanging at the side of the window and between
him and the lamp, a frown in his eyes.
"Any time big Bill Wallace drifts this far from his stamping-ground
just to look at a ditch I'm dreaming the whole thing," he told
himself, as his eyes never left the sheriff's face. "And as for not
having seen Swinnerton, that's a lie."
Tommy Garton was already scenting something very near the actual truth
when the telephone in the front room jangled noisily.
"Want me to answer it?" Wallace was already on his feet.
"Thanks," Garton told him. "But I've got it fixed so that I can handle
it from here."
He picked up the telephone which was attached to the office instrument
and which he kept on the floor at his bedside. And as he caught the
first word he pressed the receiver close to his ear so that no sound
from it might escape and reach his alert visitor.
It was the Lark's voice, tense, earnest, trembling with the import of
the Lark's message.
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