Black Jack, page 189 by Max Brand
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announced Pollard, with a break of excitement in his voice, "and seventeen thousand three hundred and eighty-two in paper. Boys, the richest haul we ever made! And the coolest deal all the way through. Which I say, Denver and Terry--Terry particular--gets extra shares for what they done!"
And there was a chorus of hearty approval. The voice of Denver cut it short.
"Terry don't want none. No, boys, knock me dead if he does. Can you beat it? 'I did it to keep my word,' he says, 'with the sheriff. You can have my share, Denver.'
"And he sticks on it. It's a game with him, boys. He plays at it like a big kid!"
In the hush of astonishment, the eyes of Kate misted. Something in that last speech had stung her cruelly. Something had to be done, and quickly, to save young Terry Hollis. But what power could influence him?
It was that thought which brought her to the hope for a solution. A very vague and faraway hope to which she clung and which unravelled slowly in her imagination. Before she left the kitchen, her plan was made, and immediately after breakfast, she went to her room and dressed for a long journey.
"I'm going over the hills to visit the Stockton girls," she told her father. "Be gone a few days."
His mind was too filled with hope for the future to understand her. He nodded idly, and she was gone.
She roped the toughest mustang of her "string" in the corral, and ten minutes later she was jogging down the trail. Halfway down a confused group of riders--some dozen in all--swarmed up out of the lower trail. Sheriff McGuire rode out on a sweating horse that told of fierce and long riding and stopped her.
His salutation was brief; he plunged into the heart of his questions. Had she noticed anything unusual this morning? Which of the men had been absent from the house last night? Particularly, who went out with Black Jack's kid?
"Nobody left the house," she said steadily. "Not a soul."
And she kept a blank eye on the sheriff while he bit h