After getting directions from the stationmaster, he walked to the sheriff’s office and jail. Sheriff Marvin Huey was a medium-sized man with a head of tousled gray hair. He looked up from a stack of wanted posters and stared at Bell with soft olive brown eyes as the Van Dorn agent entered the office.

“Sheriff Huey, I’m Isaac Bell from the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

Huey did not rise from his desk nor offer his hand; instead, he spit a wad of chewing tobacco juice into a cuspidor. “Yes, Mr. Bell, I was told you’d be on the ten o’clock train. How do you like our warm weather?”

Bell took a chair across from Huey without it being offered and sat down. “I prefer the high-altitude cool air of Denver.”

The sheriff grinned slightly at seeing Bell’s discomfort. “If you lived here long enough, you might get to like it.”

“I wired you concerning my investigation,” Bell said without preamble. “I want to obtain any information I can that would be helpful in tracking down the Butcher Bandit.”

“I hope you have better luck than I did. After the murders, all we found was a dilapidated, abandoned freight wagon and team of horses that he had driven into town.”

“Did anyone get a good look at him?”

Huey shook his head. “No one gave him the slightest notice. Three people gave different descriptions. None matched. All I know is, my posse found no tracks from wagon, horse, or automobile leading out of town.”

“What about the railroad?”

Huey shook his head. “No train left town for eight hours. I posted men at the depot who searched the passenger cars before it left, but they found no one that looked suspicious.”

“How about freight trains?”

“My deputies ran a search of the only freight train that left town that day.

Neither they nor the train engineer, fireman, or brakemen saw anyone hiding on or around the boxcars.”

“What is your theory on the bandit?” asked Bell. “How do you think he made a clean getaway?”

Huey paused to shoot another wad of tobacco saliva into the brass cuspidor. “I gave up. It pains me to say so, but I have no idea how he managed to elude me and my deputies. Frankly, I’m put out by it. In thirty years as a lawman, I’ve never lost my man.”

“You can take consolation in knowing you’re not the only sheriff or marshal who lost him after he robbed their town banks.”

“It still isn’t anything I can be proud of,” muttered Huey.

“With your permission, I would like to question the three witnesses.”

“You’ll be wasting your time.”

“May I have their names?” Bell persisted. “I have to do my job.”

Huey shrugged and wrote out three names on the back of a wanted poster, and where they could be found, handing it to Bell. “I know all these people. They’re good, honest citizens who believe what they saw even if it don’t match up.”