Free John Fitzgerald GB 06 Return of by Return of the Great Brain Page A

hotel?”
    Sheriff Baker slapped his hand on his hip. “No, we didn’t,” he said, “but by cracky we will now.”
    I don’t believe Uncle Mark, Sheriff Baker, and Papa ever walked so fast in their lives. Tom and I had to run to keep up with them all the way to the hotel-Mr. Ricker was behind the desk. He had the longest neck and biggest Adam’s apple of anybody in town.
    Sheriff Baker spoke to him. “Are you holding any mail for Paul Simpson?” he asked.
    Mr. Picker’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he talked- “I have a letter addressed to him in a Bruford Brothers envelope,” he said. “Figured it must be company business, so I decided to hold it and give it to Mr. Perkins when he arrives Saturday.”
     
    71
     
    “Give me the letter,” Sheriff Baker ordered.
    Mr Ricker removed the letter from a box and handed it to the sheriff, who opened it. Sheriff Baker was grinning as he looked at the letter and then showed it to us. Across the top was written, “ADENVILLE, UTAH, TRIP BANK NOTE SERIAL NUMBERS,” and below were listed the serial numbers.
    Sheriff Baker patted Tom on the shoulder. “Thanks to your great brain we’ve got these outlaws cold,” he said. Then he spoke to Uncle Mark. “We’ll get Calvin Whitlock to open the bank so we can check the serial numbers of the Kansas City bank notes the gang has spent. And if they match any of the serial numbers written here, which I’m sure they will, we will arrest Hutch, Grant, Davis, Eggerson, and Ludell.”
    Papa said it was time for Tom and me to go home and do the evening chores-Then he added, “I’ll be home late. Tell your mother to go ahead and have supper.”
    Tom and I started for homev “Boy, oh, boy,” I said, “what a rotten deal. Your great brairi solved the train robbery and murder and you can’t be in on the most exciting part,”
    “It wouldn’t look right,” Tom said. “The outlaws know Sheriff Baker is a bachelor and that we aren’t Uncle Mark’s kids. They would wonder why the sheriff and marshal would let Papa bring along a couple of his kids.”
    But I couldn’t help noticing that Tom was just as nervous as I was until Papa finally came home a little after seven o’clock and told us what had happened.
    Uncle Mark and Sheriff Baker arrested the five men with the help of three deputies. They found a money belt on Hutch with over a thousand dollars in it in Kansas City bank notes. Herb Grant was also wearing a money belt with his
     
    73
     
    share of the notes. Earl Eggerson had his share hidden in the toes of a pair of boots in his room at the Sheepmen’s Hotel. Curly Davis had a receipt on him for an envelope he had deposited in the Whitehorse Saloon safe containing Kansas City bank notes. They didn’t find any of the stolen money in Ludell’s possession or in his room. But when they searched the room of his girl, Rose, they found Ludell’s share of the bank notes he hadn’t spent-She admitted Ludell had given her the money to hold for him.
    With Curly Davis and Sam Ludell locked up in one cell and Herb Grant and Earl Eggerson in another and Hutch in a cell by himself, Sheriff Baker began the questioning with District Attorney Vickers and Papa present along with Uncle Mark. First Sheriff Baker showed Ludell the telegram Papa had received from the editor of the Hanksville Bugle.
    “This proves you lied,” Sheriff Baker said.
    Ludell just shrugged- “I didn’t lie,” he said. “The man looked like Butch Cassidy, and I honestly believed it was him. And you can’t send a man to prison for that.”
    Then Sheriff Baker showed all the outlaws the telegram from the Bruford Brothers about their cattle buyers keeping records of the serial numbers of bank notes they carried. Sheriff Baker then showed them the list of serial numbers Mr. Simpson had mailed to himself at the hotel.
    “We knew all we had to do was wait until the gang who held up the train started spending Kansas City bank notes,” Sheriff Baker said.