Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/63

 The three cowboys, separated from their boss in the get-away, came back to look for him, hearing the shooting, making a cautious exploration, Wallace keeping well back in the dark, close to his horse, fearing somebody would identify him if he rode in with his companions and start everything all over again. Pete and Joe ran into Coburn, who was in a froth of rage and desperation.

To think he had been played for a sucker that way, Coburn belittled himself. It was a put-up job, from the very start, that damn Waco Johnson at the bottom of it. That accounted for Waco's absence; he'd arranged it with his side-partner to get on the train and play broke, work himself in with them and grab the money.

It looked reasonable to the gang. Waco Johnson was a new man, unknown to them. He had been around the Bar-Heart-Bar only a month or two, coming from nobody knew where. It was an easy matter for them to work themselves up to a hot state of bitter denunciation, and cook up a plot that had no more foundation than public denunciations generally have.

Simpson would hit for the Nation, of course, where Waco would join him and split the easiest piece of money that ever fell into crooked hands. On that reasoning, Coburn telegraphed the federal authorities in the Indian country a description of Simpson, and sent Pete Benson to the county seat to inform the sheriff and enlist his help. Then Coburn rode off in a blind pursuit with Wallace and Joe Lobdell, his friends taking other roads, all agreeing to make for a certain point of rendezvous the next day, where they would report on anything seen or heard.