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place, thought Noah disparagingly, looking around. Not a patch on his own. Could this possibly be the stellar operation he had heard so much about?
    “Mr. Harper? John Yancey. Please, have a seat, sir.”
    Noah was a tall enough man for his time. But, distracted, he had to look up as a rugged six-footer entered the room. Business suit or not, there was that about the newcomer to suggest he might have ridden straight in off the range, with a Colt revolver strapped to his hip and a weather-beaten sombrero perched upon his head.
    Yancey settled into a wooden five-legged castered chair behind the desk and rocked back almost to the wall, comfortable and at ease. “So,” he said pleasantly, with a slight twinkle in his dark brown eyes. “We hustled all the preliminary get-to-know-you’s out of the way. What can I do for you, Mr. Harper?”
    “I have a problem.”
    “Uh-huh. Most folks do, or they wouldn’t be seekin’ out a Pinkerton man.”
    “This involves—” Noah paused, choosing his words carefully, “—a great deal of money. Stolen money. Taken…to the other side of the country.”
    “Uh-huh. We talkin’ cash, here, Mr. Harper?”
    “Uh—no. Not exactly.”
    Activity in the rest of the first-floor agency hummed on around them: several potential clients entering to consult with detectives, others leaving, doors opening and closing, a raised voice, a stamp of feet. All the usual sounds that served as mere background noise for a fairly intensive interview.
    John Yancey looked straight across the intervening space at his own potential client, heavy brows furrowed, to say quietly, “I understand it’s hard lettin’ loose with facts, Mr. Harper. But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me up front what’s goin’ on.”
    Reluctantly, Noah lay his thick file upon the desktop. “Facts. Very well, Mr. Yancey. I’ll apprise you of whatever facts you need to work with, and then you apprise me of what you will charge.”
    “Fair enough.”
    “She’s my sister,” began Noah, “and she’s stolen a big chunk of my birthright.”
    The story went on, in an increasingly impassioned tone, to recount events taking place over the past thirty years, and those more recent; the list of property snatched away, and its probable value; the escape, off the plane of the earth, to that back end of civilization in California.
    “How much farther could she go,” Noah demanded heatedly, “than to some barbaric place beyond the reach of the law?”
    “How much farther, indeed?” murmured the detective. He had leaned forward to take notes, writing something indecipherable in pencil on yellow paper. “Got any tintypes handy, or a wanted poster, so I can pick this desperado out of a crowd?”
    “No. I didn’t even know what was going on, until it was too late. However, I did almost bump into her one afternoon. She was leaving Gabe Finnegan’s office as I was entering his hallway. Come to think of it, she may have something going on with that old man. They did travel south and west together.”
    “Uh-huh. Maybe. Then you can describe your sister?”
    “Half-sister,” Noah firmly corrected. “Absolutely I can describe her.”
    Yancey listened for a minute to the brief, resentful statement of color and carriage. “Pretty girl, then,” he surmised, at the end of it.
    “Pretty? Hardly. Quite average-looking. Like a damned cutpurse.”
    “Well, you would think that, Mr. Harper, you two bein’ related and all.” A flash of white teeth against taut, clean-shaven skin that was obviously more exposed to the outdoors than the inside of any building. “Now, the ord’nary feller might think somethin’ entirely different.”
    Noah shifted impatiently on his uncomfortable seat. “I suppose so. All right, there you have the gist of it. Are you interested in taking on my case?”
    Pencil down, paper aside, and another slow rock backward for consideration. This meant one leg akimbo over the other, booted ankle resting on