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insisted Poe doggedly. "If the Kid's in Fort Sumner or has been here, he'll know beyond a doubt. Maybe he'll tell us."

"Maybe," replied Garrett dubiously, "and maybe he won't. If the Kid happened to hear Maxwell had betrayed him, Pete would be due to start on a long journey. But just to satisfy you, Poe, we'll see him."

They crossed the road, white with moonlight, slipped into the sleeping town, stole noiselessly through the streets in the shadows of the houses, and came out into the broad open space that had once been the parade ground of the army post. Before them stood the Maxwell home.

Once used as officers' quarters, it was a large two-story building containing twenty rooms, its lower walls of adobe bricks sustaining a frame superstructure with a row of dormer windows along its gable roof opening from the upper rooms. A wide sheltered veranda ran across its front and along the north and south sides. It faced east on the old parade ground, from which it was separated by a low picket fence that extended fifty feet to the south to a row of adobe houses along the side yard. A cannon, relic of old soldier days, stood outside the fence near the northeast corner. At the southeast corner beside the front gate grew a tall cottonwood tree.

"Pete Maxwell's sleeping room is right there in the southeast corner of the house," said Garrett when they reached the gate. "You fellows wait here outside and I'll go in and have a talk with him."

Garrett stepped across the porch and entered the door of Maxwell's room which, on this warm summer night, had been left open. Poe sat down on the edge of the porch at the gateway. McKinney squatted down on his heels, cowboy fashion, just outside the picket fence and rolled