"If old Pierre Luzon ever gets out of San Quentin," remarked the storekeeper, "I guess he could tell, but he's up for life. He was nabbed in that same Tulare Lake affair 'bout which Tom had been talkin'."
"Yes," said the sheriff, "two others were shot dead before they got back to the mountains. The White Wolf and Pierre were ridin' alone when the Frenchie's horse stumbled. They picked him up insensible, a broken leg and concussion of the brain, and he was the only one of the gang who ever went to jail."
"God 'lmighty," exclaimed Buck, "old Pierre used to sit around in this here store day after day, smokin' an old foreign-lookin' pipe, and hardly speakin' a word. He used to pretend he knew no English. We never once suspected that he was one of Don Manuel's bunch--always thought of him as an old sheepherder, a bit off his nut, who had saved a few dollars and was takin' things easy. And hell, all the time he was the White Wolf's look-out man, makin' note of everything and passin' the word o' warnin' when there was talk of the sheriff gettin' busy."
"I'll allow Pierre Luzon fooled me proper," concurred Tom Baker. "However, he got what was cornin' to him all right, a life sentence, though he ought to have been hanged. Well, perhaps it is only the White Wolf and Pierre Luzon who now know the cave where Joaquin Murietta cached his treasure."
"And Guadalupe perhaps as well," remarked Buck Ashley.
"Yes, perhaps Guadalupe also," assented the sheriff. "But the White Wolf keeps guard over her."
"That's the real White Wolf this time," laughed
Dick Willoughby, with a nod toward the young lieutenant, who had been listening intently to the tale of weird romance.
"The real White Wolf?" replied Munson, enquiringly. "You've got me all tangled up. What do you mean?"
"Don't you know how Don Manuel came by his name of the White Wolf?" asked the sheriff.
"Why, gosh all hemlock! He is named because of a darn big white wolf that has been seen at different times in this here country for a hundred years."
"Wolves don't live so long," protested the lieutenant incredulously.
"Well, this one does," retorted Tom, curtly. "Leastwise he's been seen from time to time since ever I can remember. In the old days they named the White Wolf Rancho after this monster animal. It has a charmed life. No one can kill this big fellow, altho' lots of shots have been fired at him. And the same was true of Don Manuel de Valencia. He escaped so often that folks believed his life a charmed one. And so they called him the White Wolf."