He held out a small sack that he had just purchased at the general store.

“Gee, thanks, mister.” Jackie Ruggles wasted no time in snatching the sack and savoring a green gumdrop. He was dressed in a cotton shirt, pants that were cut off above the knee, and worn-leather shoes that Bell guessed were handed down by an older brother. The clothes were quite clean, as befitting a mother who was a laundress. He was thin as a broomstick, with boyish facial features that were covered with freckles, and topped by a thicket of uncombed curly light brown hair.

“I was told by Sheriff Huey that you saw the bank robber.”

The boy answered while chewing on the gumdrop. “Sure did. The only trouble is, nobody believes me.”

“I do,” Bell assured him. “Tell me what you saw.”

Jackie was about to reach in the sack for another gumdrop, but Bell stopped him.

“You can have them after you’ve told me what you know.”

The boy looked peeved but shrugged. “I was playing baseball in the street with my friends when this old guy—”

“How old?”

Jackie studied Bell. “About your age.”

Bell never considered thirty as old, but to a young boy of ten he must have appeared ancient. “Go on.”

“He was dressed like most of the miners who live here, but he wore a big hat like the Mexicans.”

“A sombrero.”

“I think that’s what it’s called.”

“And he was toting a heavy sack over his shoulder. It looked like it was plumb full of something.”

“What else did you notice?”

“One of his hands was missing the little finger.”

Bell stiffened. This was the first clue to identifying the killer. “Are you sure he was missing a little finger?”

“As sure as I’m standing here,” answered Jackie.

“Which hand?” Bell asked, containing his mounting excitement.

“The left.”

“You’ve no doubt it was the left hand?”

Jackie merely nodded while staring longingly at the gumdrop sack. “He looked at me like he was really mad when he saw I was looking back.”

“Then what happened?”

“I had to catch a fly ball. When I turned around, he was gone.”

Bell patted Jackie on the head, almost losing his hand in a sea of unruly red hair.

He smiled. “Go ahead and eat your gumdrops, but, if I were you, I’d chew slowly so they last longer.”

AFTER HE checked out of the Rhyolite Hotel and before he boarded the train, Bell paid the telegraph operator at the depot to send a wire to Van Dorn describing the Butcher Bandit as missing the little finger on his left hand. He knew that Van Dorn would quickly send out the news to his army of agents to watch out for and report any man with that disfigurement.

Instead of traveling back to Denver, he decided on the spur of the moment to go to Bisbee. Maybe—just maybe—he might get lucky again and find another clue to the bandit’s identity. He leaned back in his seat, as the torrid heat of the desert grilled the interior of the Pullman car. Bell hardly noticed it.