A woman with a checkered apron and a motherly look came to let her chickens out and milk the cow, and woke Bud so that she could tell him she believed he had been on a "toot", or he never would have taken such a liberty with her corral.

Bud agreed to the toot, and apologized, and asked for breakfast.

And the woman, after one good look at him, handed him the milk bucket and asked him how he liked his eggs.
"All the way from barn to breakfast," Bud grinned, and the woman chuckled and called him Smarty, and told him to come in as soon as the cow was milked.
Bud had a great breakfast with the widow Hanson.

She talked, and Bud learned a good deal about Crater and its surroundings, and when he spoke of holdup gangs she seemed to know immediately what he meant, and told him a great deal more about the Catrockers than Marian had done.
Everything from murdering and robbing a peddler to looting the banks at Crater and Lava was laid to the Catrockers.

They were the human buzzards that watched over the country and swooped down wherever there was money.
The sheriff couldn't do anything with them, and no one expected him to, so far as Bud could discover.
He hesitated a long time before he asked about Marian Morris.