Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/364

 ducked for the creek. Sinclair put a soft bullet through Banks’s shoulder—tore it pretty bad, Gordon—and made his get-away before Wickwire and I could reach the barn again. I got Ed on his horse and back to Wickwire’s, and we sent one of the boys to Oroville for a doctor. After Banks fell out of the saddle and was helpless Sinclair talked to him before I came up. ‘You ought to have kept out of this, Ed,’ he said. ‘This is a railroad fight. Why didn’t they send the head of their own gang after me?’—naming you.” Kennedy nodded toward Whispering Smith.

“Naming me.”

“Banks says, ‘I’m sheriff of this county, and will be a long time yet!’ I took the papers from his breast pocket,” continued Kennedy. “You can see where he was hit.” Kennedy laid the sheriff’s packet on the table. Bucks drew his chair forward and, with his cigar between his fingers, picked the packet up and opened it. Kennedy went on: “Ed told Sinclair if he couldn’t land him himself that he knew a man who could and would before he was a week older. He meant you, Gordon, and the last thing Ed told me was that he wanted you to serve the papers on Sinclair.”

A silence fell on the company. One of the documents passing under Bucks’s hand caught his eye and he opened it. It was the warrant for Sinclair. 338