"You're Marston, ain't you?" he said, slowly and painfully, gasping with every breath. "I've heard the Taggart's talk about you. Old Tom's developed a yellow streak in his old age an' he's leavin' all his dirty work to Neal. Neal's got a yellow streak, too, for that matter, but he's young an' ain't got no sense. I reckon I'm goin' somewhere now, an' so I can say what I like. Taggart ain't no friend of mine--neither of them. They've played me dirt--more than once. My name's Al Sharp. You know that Tom Taggart was as deep in that idol business as your dad was. He told me. But he's got Telza soft-soaped into thinkin' that Betty Clayton's folks snaked it from Telza's people. Taggart's got evidence that your dad planted the idol around here somewheres--seems to know that your dad drawed a diagram of the place an' left it with Betty. He set Telza to huntin' for it. Telza got it tonight--it was hid somewhere. I was with him--waitin' for him. If he got the diagram I was to knife him and take it away from him. Taggart an' his dad is somewhere around here--I was to meet them down the river a piece. Telza double-crossed me; tried to sneak over here an' hunt the idol himself. I found him--he had the diagram. I tried to get it from him--he stuck his toad-sticker in me, . . . the little copper-skinned devil. He--" He hesitated and choked, raising himself as though to get a long breath. But a dark flood again stained his lips, he strangled and stretched out limply.
Calumet turned him over on his back and covered his face with a handkerchief. Then he stood up, looking around at the edge of the clearing. Ten feet in front of him, curled around the edge of a bit of sagebrush, was a dirty white object. He walked over, kicked the sagebrush violently, that a concealed rattler might not spring on him, and took up the object. It was a piece of paper about six inches square, and in the dim moonlight Calumet could see that it contained writing of some sort and a crude sketch. He looked closer at it, saw a spot marked "Idol is here," and then folded it quickly and placed it, crumpled into a ball, into a pocket of his trousers.
He was now certain that Taggart had been merely deceiving Betty; there had been no other significance to his visits. The visits were merely part of a plan to get possession of the idol. While he had been talking to Betty in the office tonight Telza had stolen the diagram.