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 were thrown down on him while he still balanced on his toes; Simrall screwed the gun against his short ribs as if to bore him to the gall.

"Are the books in there?" Simrall asked again.

"I told you everything was taken out of that office, Mr. Simrall."

"Where are they?"

"In a safe place," Hall replied calmly.

"You'll stick around with us till we search this buildin'," Simrall announced. "If we don't find the books, we'll see if there ain't some way to make you tell the truth. We'll start at the recorder's office."

The search didn't go very well in that quarter. Simrall and the two men who started with him in such fullfeathered assurance came back with a good deal more speed than they went, ducking and dodging, running doubled as if they had touched off a blast which they expected to shower them with rocks before they could get to cover.

"Them two hellions!" Simrall puffed, safe around the angle of the wall.

"Guns enough in there to start an army," said a cowboy-looking little old chap with a grizzled tuft of whiskers.

"I ain't a fightin' women, nohow!" another one of the bunch declared, in that renunciatory tone of a man who has picked up something too hot to hold.

At this declaration the youngest man in the crowd winked, grinning broadly, directing his pleasantries: to Hall, in which quarter he rightly calculated they would be most appreciated. Hall was standing with his back against the wall, a look of unconcern on his face that he