Ware returned to headquarters toward evening of the next day. He had ridden hard and long, but he listened to Thorne's definition of his new duties with kindling eye, and considerable appearance of quiet satisfaction. Bob met him outside the office.
"You aren't living up to your part, Ware," said he, with mock anxiety. "According to Hoyle you ought to draw your gun, whirl the cylinder, and murmur gently, Aha!"
"Why should I do that?" asked Ware, considerably mystified.
"To see if your weapon is in order, of course."
"How would a fool trick like that show whether my gun's in shape?"
"Hanged if I know," confessed Bob, "but they always do that in books and on the stage."
"Well, my gun will shoot," said Ware, shortly.
It was then too late to visit Welton that evening, but at a good hour the following morning Bob announced his intention of going over to the mill.
"If you're going to be my faithful guardian, you'll have to walk," he told Ware. "My horse is up north somewhere, and there isn't another saddle in camp."
"I'm willing," said Ware; "my animals are plumb needy of a rest."
At the last moment Amy joined them.
"I have a day off instead of Sunday," she told them, "and you're the first humans that have discovered what two feet are made for. I never can get anybody to walk two steps with me," she complained.
"Never tried before you acquired thosebeautifulgray elkskin boots with theravishinghobnails in 'em," chaffed Bob.
Amy said nothing, but her cheeks burned with two red spots. She chatted eagerly, too eagerly, trying to throw into the expedition the air of a holiday excursion. Bob responded to her rather feverish gaiety, but Ware looked at her with an eye in which comprehension was slowly dawning. He had nothing to add to the rapid-fire conversation. Finally Amy inquired with mock anxiety, over his unwonted silence.
"I'm on my job," replied Ware briefly.
This silenced her for a moment or so, while she examined the woods about them with furtive, searching glances as though their shadows might conceal an enemy.
To Bob, at least, the morning conduced to gaiety, for the air was crisp and sparkling with the wine of early fall. Down through the sombre pines, here and there, flamed the delicate pink of a dogwood, the orange of the azaleas, or the golden yellow of aspens ripening already under the hurrying of early frosts. The squirrels, Stellar's jays, woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees were very busy scurrying here and there, screaming gossip, or moving diligently and methodically as their natures were. All the rest of the forest was silent. Not a breath of wind stirred the tallest fir-tip or swayed the most lofty pine branch. Through the woodland spaces the sunlight sparkled with the inconceivable brilliance of the higher levels, as though the air were filled with glittering particles in suspension, like the mica snowstorms of the peep shows inside a child's candy egg.
They dipped into the cañon of the creek and out again through the yellow pines of the other side. They skirted the edge of the ancient clearing for the almost prehistoric mill that had supplied early settlers with their lumber, and thence looked out through trees to the brown and shimmering plain lying far below.
"My, I'm glad I'm not there!" exclaimed Amy fervently; "I always say that," she added.
"A hundred and eleven day before yesterday, Jack Pollock says," remarked Bob.
So at last they gained the long ridge leading toward the mill and saw a hundred feet away the mill road, and the forks where their own wagon trail joined it.
At this point they again entered the forest, screened by young growth and a thicket of alders.
"Look there," Amy pointed out. "See that dogwood, up by the yellow pine. It's the most splendiferous we've seen yet. Wait a minute. I'm going to get a branch of it for Mr. Welton's office. I don't believe anybody ever picks anything for him."
"Let me—" began Bob; but she was already gone, calling back over her shoulder.
"No; this is my treat!"
The men stopped in the wagon trail to wait for her. Bob watched with distinct pleasure her lithe, active figure making its way through the tangle of underbrush, finally emerging into the clear and climbing with swift, sure movements to the little elevation on which grew the beautiful, pink-leaved dogwoods. She turned when she had gained the level of the yellow pine, to wave her hand at her companions. Even at the distance, Bob could make out the flush of her cheeks and divine the delighted sparkle of her eyes.
But as she turned, her gesture was arrested in midair, and almost instantly she uttered a piercing scream. Bob had time to take a half step forward. Then a heavy blow on the back of his neck threw him forward. He stumbled and fell on his face. As he left his feet, the crash of two revolver shots in quick succession rang in his ears.
Oldham's cold rage carried him to the railroad and into his berth. Then, with the regular beat and throb of the carwheels over the sleepers, other considerations forced themselves upon him. Consequences demanded recognition.
The land agent had not for many years permitted himself to act on impulse. Therefore this one lapse from habit alarmed him vaguely by the mere fact that it was a lapse from habit. He distrusted himself in an unaccustomed environment of the emotions.
But superinduced on this formless uneasiness were graver considerations. He could not but admit to himself that he had by his expressed order placed himself to some extent in Saleratus Bill's power. He did not for a moment doubt the gun-man's loyal intentions. As long as things went well he would do his best by his employer—if merely to gain the reward promised him only on fulfillment of his task. But it is not easy to commit a murder undetected. And if detected, Oldham had no illusions as to Saleratus Bill. The gun-man, would promptly shelter himself behind his principal.
As the night went on, and Oldham found himself unable to sleep in the terrible heat, the situation visualized itself. Step by step he followed out the sequence of events as they might be, filling in the minutest details of discovery, exposure and ruin. Gradually, in the tipped balance of after midnight, events as they might be became events as they surely would be. Oldham began to see that he had made a fearful mistake. No compunction entered his mind that he had condemned a man to death; but a cold fear gripped him lest his share should be discovered, and he should be called upon to face the consequences. Oldham enjoyed and could play only the game that was safe so far as physical and personal retribution went.
So deeply did the guilty panic invade his soul that after a time he arose and dressed. The sleepy porter was just turning out from the smoking compartment.
"What's this next station?" Oldham demanded.
"Mo-harvey," blinked the porter.
"I get off there," stated Oldham briefly.
The porter stared at him.
"I done thought you went 'way through," he confessed. "I'se scairt I done forgot you."
"All right," said Oldham curtly, and handing him a tip. "Never mind that confounded brush; get my suit case."
Ten seconds later he stood on the platform of the little station in the desert while the tail lights of the train diminished slowly into the distance.
The desert lay all about him like a calmed sea on which were dim half-lights of sage brush or alkali flats. On a distant horizon slept black mountain ranges, stretched low under a brilliant sky that arched triumphant. In it the stars flamed steadily like candles, after the strange desert fashion. Although by day the heat would have scorched the boards on which he stood, now Oldham shivered in the searching of the cool insistent night wind that breathed across the great spaces.
He turned to the lighted windows of the little station where a tousled operator sat at a telegraph key. A couch in the corner had been recently deserted. The fact that the operator was still awake and on duty argued well for another train soon. Oldham proffered his question.
"Los Angeles express due now. Half-hour late," replied the operator wearily, without looking up.
Oldham caught the train, which landed him in White Oaks about noon. There he hired a team, and drove the sixty miles to Sycamore Flats by eleven o'clock that night. The fear was growing in his heart, and he had to lay on himself a strong retaining hand to keep from lashing his horses beyond their endurance and strength. Sycamore Flats was, of course, long since abed. In spite of his wild impatience Oldham retained enough sense to know that it would not do to awaken any one for the sole purpose of inquiring as to the whereabouts of Saleratus Bill. That would too obviously connect him with the gun-man. Therefore he stabled his horses, roused one of the girls at Auntie Belle's, and retired to the little box room assigned him.
There nature asserted herself. The man had not slept for two nights; he had travelled many miles on horseback, by train, and by buckboard; he had experienced the most exhausting of emotions and experiences. He fell asleep, and he did not awaken until after sun-up.
Promptly he began his inquiries. Saleratus Bill had passed through the night before; he had ridden up the mill road.
Oldham ate his breakfast, saddled one of the team horses, and followed. Ordinarily, he was little of a woodsman, but his anxiety sharpened his wits and his eyes, so that a quarter mile from the summit he noticed where a shod horse had turned off from the road. After a moment's hesitation he turned his own animal to follow the trail. The horse tracks were evidently fresh, and Oldham surmised that it was hardly probable two horsemen had as yet that morning travelled the mill road. While he debated, young Elliott swung down the dusty way headed toward the village. He greeted Oldham.
"Is Orde back at headquarters yet?" the latter asked, on impulse.
"Yes, he got back day before yesterday," the young ranger replied; "but you won't find him there this morning. He walked over to the mill to see Welton. You'd probably get him there."
Oldham waited only until Elliott had rounded the next corner, then spurred his horse up the mountain. The significance of the detour was now no longer in doubt, for he remembered well how and where the wagon trail from headquarters joined the mill road. Saleratus Bill would leave his horse out of sight on the hog-back ridge, sneak forward afoot, and ambush his man at the forks of the road.
And now, in the clairvoyance of this guilty terror, Oldham saw as assured facts several further possibilities. Saleratus Bill was known to have ridden up the mill road; he, Oldham, was known to have been inquiring after both Saleratus Bill and Orde—in short, out of wild improbabilities, which to his ordinary calm judgment would have meant nothing at all, he now wove a tissue of danger. He wished he had thought to ask Elliott how long ago Orde had started out from headquarters.
The last pitch up the mountain was by necessity a fearful grade, for it had to surmount as best it could the ledge at the crest of the plateau. Horsemen here were accustomed to pause every fifty feet or so to allow their mounts a gulp of air. Oldham plied lash and spur. He came out from his frenzy of panic to find his horse, completely blown, lying down under him. The animal, already weary from its sixty-mile drive of yesterday, was quite done. After a futile effort to make it rise, Oldham realized this fact. He pursued his journey afoot.
Somewhat sobered and brought to his senses by this accident, Oldham trudged on as rapidly as his wind would allow. As he neared the crossroads he slackened his pace, for he saw that no living creature moved on the headquarters fork of the road. As a matter of fact, at that precise instant both Bob and Ware were within forty yards of him, standing still waiting for Amy to collect her dogwood leaves. A single small alder concealed them from the other road. If they had not happened to have stopped, two seconds would have brought them into sight in either direction. Therefore, Oldham thought the road empty, and himself came to a halt to catch his breath and mop his brow.
As he replaced his hat, his eye caught a glimpse of a man crouching and gliding cautiously forward through the low concealment of the snowbush. His movements were quick, his head was craned forward, every muscle was taut, his eyes fixed on some object invisible to Oldham with an intensity that evidently excluded from the field of his vision everything but that toward which his lithe and snake-like advance was bringing him. In his hand he carried the worn and shining Colts 45 that was always his inseparable companion.
Oldham made a single step forward. At the same moment somewhere above him on the hill a woman screamed. The cry was instantly followed by two revolver shots.
Ware was an expert gun-man who had survived the early days of Arizona, New Mexico, and the later ruffianism of the border on Old Mexico. His habit was at all times alert. Now, in especial, behind his casual conversation, he had been straining his finer senses for the first intimations of danger. For perhaps six seconds before Amy cried out he had been aware of an unusual faint sound heard beneath rather than above the cheerful and accustomed noises of the forest. It baffled him. If he had imposed silence on his companion, and had set himself to listening, he might have been able to identify and localize it, but it really presented nothing alarming enough. It might have been a squirrel playfully spasmodic, or the leisurely step forward of some hidden and distant cow browsing among the bushes. Ware lent an attentive ear to the quiet sounds of the woodland, but continued to stand at ease and unalarmed.
The scream, however, released instantly the springs of his action. With the heel of his left palm he dealt Bob so violent a shoving blow that the young man was thrown forward off his feet. As part of the same motion his right hand snatched his weapon from its holster, threw the muzzle over his left shoulder, and discharged the revolver twice in the direction from which Ware all at once realized the sound had proceeded. So quickly did the man's brain act, so instantly did his muscles follow his brain, that the scream, the blow, and the two shots seemed to go off together as though fired by one fuse.
Bob bounded to his feet. Ware had whirled in his tracks, had crouched, and was glaring fixedly across the openings at the forks. The revolver smoked in his hand.
"Oh, are you hurt? Are you hurt?" Amy was crying over and over, as, regardless of the stiff manzañita and the spiny deer brush, she tore her way down the hill.
"All right! All right!" Bob found his breath to assure her.
She stopped short, clenched her hands at her sides, and drew a deep, sobbing breath. Then, quite collectedly, she began to disentangle herself from the difficulties into which her haste had precipitated her.
"It's all right," she called to Ware. "He's gone. He's run."
Still tense, Ware rose to his full height. He let down the hammer of his six-shooter, and dropped the weapon back in its holster.
"What was it, Amy?" he asked, as the girl rejoined them.
"Saleratus Bill," she panted. "He had his gun in his hand."
Bob was looking about him a trifle bewildered.
"I thought for a minute I was hit," said he.
"I knocked you down togetyou down," explained Ware. "If there's shooting going on, it's best to get low."
"Thought I was shot," confessed Bob. "I heard two shots."
"I fired twice," said Ware. "Thought sure I must have hit, or he'd have fired back. Otherwise I'd a' kept shooting. You say he run?"
"Immediately. Didn't you see him?"
"I just cut loose at the noise he made. Why do you suppose he didn't shoot?"
"Maybe he wasn't gunning for us after all," suggested Bob.
"Maybe you've got another think coming," said Ware.
During this short exchange they were all three moving down the wagon trail. Ware's keen old eyes were glancing to right, left and ahead, and his ears fairly twitched. In spite of his conversation and speculations, he was fully alive to the possibilities of further danger.
"He maybe's laying for us yet," said Bob, as the thought finally occurred to him. "Better have your gun handy."
"My gun's always handy," said Ware.
"You're bearing too far south," interposed the girl. "He was more up this way."
"Don't think it," said Ware.
"Yes," she insisted. "I marked that young fir near where I first saw him; and he ran low around that clump of manzañita."
Still skeptical, Ware joined her.
"That's right," he admitted, after a moment. "Here's his trail. I'd have swore he was farther south. That's where I fired. I only missed him by about a hundred yards," he grinned. "He sure made a mighty tall sneak. I'm still figuring why he didn't open fire."
"Waiting for a better chance, maybe," suggested Amy.
"Must be. But what better chance does he want, unless he aims to get Bob here, with a club?"
They followed the tracks left by Saleratus Bill until it was evident beyond doubt that the gun-man had in reality departed. Then they started to retrace their steps.
"Why not cut across?" asked Bob.
"I want to see whereabouts Iwasshooting," said Ware.
"We'll cut across and wait for you on the road."
"All right," Ware agreed.
They made their short-cut, and waited. After a minute or so Ware shouted to them.
"Hullo!" Bob answered.
"Come here!"
They returned down the dusty mill road. Just beyond the forks Ware was standing, looking down at some object. As they approached he raised his face to them. Even under its tan, it was pale.
"Guess this is another case of innocent bystander," said he gravely.
Flat on his back, arms outstretched in the dust, lay Oldham, with a bullet hole accurately in the middle of his forehead.
"Good heavens!" cried Amy. "What an awful thing!"
"Yes, ma'am," said Ware; "this is certainly tough. But I can't see but it was a plumb accident. Who'd have thought he'd be coming along the road just at that minute."
"Of course, you're not to blame," Amy reassured him quickly. "We must get help. Of course, he's quite dead."
Ware nodded, gazing down at his victim reflectively.
"I was shootin' a little high," he remarked at last.
Up to this moment Bob had said nothing.
"If it will relieve your mind, any," he told Ware, "it isn't such a case of innocent bystander as you may think. This man is the one who hired Saleratus Bill to abduct me in the first place; and probably to kill me in the second. I have a suspicion he got what he deserved."
"Oh!" cried Amy, looking at him reproachfully.
"It's a fact," Bob insisted. "I know his connection with all this better than you do, and his being on this road was no accident. It was to see his orders carried out."
Ware was looking at him shrewdly.
"That fits," he declared. "I couldn't figure why my old friend Bill didn't cut loose. But he's got a head on him."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, when he see Oldham dropped, what use was there of going to shooting? It would just make trouble for him and he couldn't hope for no pay. He just faded."
"He's a quick thinker, then," said Bob.
"You bet you!"
The two men laid Oldham's body under the shade. As they disposed it decently, Bob experienced again that haunting sense of having known him elsewhere that had on several occasions assailed his memory. The man's face was familiar to him with a familiarity that Bob somehow felt antedated his California acquaintance.
"We must get to the mill and send a wagon for him," Ware was saying.
But Amy suddenly turned faint, and was unable to proceed.
"It's perfectly silly of me!" she cried indignantly. "The idea of my feeling faint! It makes me so angry!"
"It's perfectly natural," Bob told her. "I think you've shown a heap of nerve. Most girls would have flopped over."
The men helped her to a streamlet some hundreds of yards away. Here it was agreed that Ware should proceed in search of a conveyance; and that Bob and Amy should there await his return.
Ware disappeared rapidly up the dusty road, Bob and Amy standing side by side in silence, watching him go. When the lean, long figure of the old mountaineer had quite disappeared, and the light, eddying dust, peculiar to the Sierra country, had died, Amy closed her eyes, raised her hand to her heart, and sank slowly to the bank of the little creek. Her vivid colour, which had for a moment returned under the influence of her strong will and her indignation over her weakness, had again ebbed from her cheeks.
Bob, with an exclamation of alarm, dropped to her side and passed his arm back of her shoulders. As she felt the presence of his support, she let slip the last desperate holdings of physical command, and leaned back gratefully, breathing hard, her eyes still closed.
After a moment she opened them long enough to smile palely at the anxious face of the young man.
"It's all right," she said. "I'm all right. Don't be alarmed. Just let me rest a minute. I'll be all right."
She closed her eyes again. Bob, watching, saw the colour gradually flowing up under her skin, and was reassured.
The girl lay against his arm limply. At first he was concerned merely with the supporting of the slight burden; careful to hold her as comfortably as possible. Then the warmth of her body penetrated to his arm. A new emotion invaded him, feeble in the beginning, but gaining strength from instant to instant. It mounted his breast as a tide would mount, until it had shortened his breath, set his heart to thumping dully, choked his throat. He looked down at her with troubled eyes, following the curve of her upturned face, the long line of her throat exposed by the backward thrown position of her head, the swell of her breast under the thin gown. The helplessness of the pose caught at Bob's heart. For the first time Amy—the vivid, self-reliant, capable, laughing Amy—appealed to him as a being demanding protection, as a woman with a woman's instinctive craving for cherishing, as a delicious, soft, feminine creature, calling forth the tendernesses of a man's heart. In the normal world of everyday association this side of her had never been revealed, never suspected; yet now, here, it rose up to throw into insignificance all the other qualities of the girl he had known. Bob spared a swift thought of gratitude to the chance that had revealed to him this unguessed, intimate phase of womanhood.
And then the insight with which the significant moment had endowed him leaped to the simple comprehension of another thought—that this revelation of intimacy, of the woman-appeal lying unguessed beneath the comradeship of everyday life, was after all only a matter of chance. It had been revealed to him by the accident of a moment's faintness, by which the conscious will of the girl had been driven back from the defences. In a short time it would be over. She would resume her ordinary demeanour, her ordinary interest, her ordinary bright, cheerful, attractive, matter-of-fact, efficient self. Everything would be as before. But—and here Bob's breath came quickest—in the great goodness of the world lay another possibility; that sometime, at the call of some one person, for that one and no other, this inner beautiful soul of the feminine appeal would come forth freely, consciously, willingly.
Amy opened her eyes, sat up, shook herself slightly, and laughed.
"I'm all right now," she told Bob, "and certainly very much ashamed."
"Amy!" he stammered.
She shot a swift look at him, and immediately arose to her feet.
"We will have to testify at a coroner's inquest, I presume," said she, in the most matter-of-fact tones.
"I suppose so," agreed Bob morosely. It is impossible to turn back all the strongly set currents of life without at least a temporary turmoil.
Amy glanced at him sideways, and smiled a faint, wise smile to herself. For in these matters, while men are more analytical after the fact, women are by nature more informed. She said nothing, but stooped to the creek for a drink. When she had again straightened to her feet, Bob had come to himself. The purport of Amy's last speech had fully penetrated his understanding, and one word of it—the wordtestify—had struck him with an idea.
"By Jove!" he cried, "that lets out Pollock!"
"What?" said Amy.
"This man Oldham was the only witness who could have convicted George Pollock of killing Plant."
"What do you mean?" asked Amy, leaning forward interestedly. "Was he there? How do you know about it?"
A half-hour before Bob would have hesitated long before confiding his secret to a fourth party; but now, for him, the world of relations had shifted.
"I'll tell you about it," said he, without hesitation; "but this is serious. You must never breathe even a word of it to any one!"
"Certainly not!" cried Amy.
"Oldham wasn't an actual witness of the killing; but I was, and he knew it. He could have made me testify by informing the prosecuting attorney."
Bob sketched rapidly his share in the tragedy: how he had held Pollock's horse, and been in a way an accessory to the deed. Amy listened attentively to the recital of the facts, but before Bob had begun to draw his conclusions, she broke in swiftly.
"So Oldham offered to let you off, if you would keep out of this Modoc Land case," said she.
Bob nodded.
"That was it."
"But it would have put you in the penitentiary," she pointed out.
"Well, the case wasn't quite decided yet."
She made her quaint gesture of the happily up-thrown hands.
"Just what you said about Mr. Welton!" she cried. "Oh, I'mgladyou told me this! I was trying so hard to think you were doing a high and noble duty in ignoring the consequences to that poor old man. But I could not. Now I see!"
"What do you mean?" asked Bob curiously, as she paused.
"You could do it because your act placed you in worse danger," she told him.
"Too many for me," Bob disclaimed. "I simply wasn't going to be bluffed out by that gang!"
"That was it," said Amy wisely. "I know you better than you do yourself. You don't suppose," she cried, as a new thought alarmed her, "that Oldham has told the prosecuting attorney that your evidence would be valuable."
Bob shook his head.
"The trial is next week," he pointed out. "In case the prosecution had intended calling me, I should have been summoned long since. There's dust; they are coming. You'd better stay here."
She agreed readily to this. After a moment a light wagon drove up. On the seat perched Welton and Ware. Bob climbed in behind.
They drove rapidly down to the forks, stopped and hitched the team.
"Ware's been telling me the whole situation, Bobby," said Welton. "That gang's getting pretty desperate! I've heard of this man Oldham around this country for a long while, but I always understood he was interested against the Power Company."
"Bluff," said Bob briefly. "He's been in their employ from the first, but I never thought he'd go in for quite this kind of strong-arm work. He doesn't look it, do you think?"
"I never laid eyes on him," replied Welton. "He's never been near the mill, and I never happened to run across him anywhere else."
By this time they had secured the team. Ware led the way to the tree under which lay the body of the land agent. Welton surveyed the prostrate figure for some time in silence. Then turned to Bob, a curious expression on his face.
"It wasn't an accident that I never met him," said he. "He saw to it. Don't you remember this man, Bobby?"
"I saw him in Los Angeles some years ago."
"Before that—in Michigan—many years ago."
"His face has always seemed familiar to me," said Bob slowly. "I can't place it—yes—hold on!"
A picture defined itself from the mists of his boyhood memories. It was of an open field, with a fringe of beech woods in the distance. A single hickory stood near its centre, and under this a group lounged, smoking pipes. A man, perched on a cracker box, held a blank book and pencil. Another stood by a board, a gun in his hand. The smell of black powder hung in the atmosphere. Little glass balls popped into the air, and were snuffed out. He saw Oldham distinctly, looking younger and browner, but with the same cynical mouth, the same cold eyes, the same slanted eyeglasses. Even before his recollections reproduced the scorer's drawling voice calling the next contestant, his memory supplied the name.
"It's Newmark!" he cried aloud.
"Joe Newmark, your father's old partner! He hasn't changed much. He disappeared from Michigan when you were about eight years old; didn't he! Nobody ever knew how or why, but everybody had suspicions.... Well; let's get him in."
They disposed the body in the wagon, and drove back up the road. At the little brook they stopped to let off Ware. It was agreed that all danger to Bob was now past, and that the gun-man would do better to accompany Amy back to headquarters. Of course, it would be necessary to work the whole matter out at the coroner's inquest, but in view of the circumstances, Ware's safety was assured.
At the mill the necessary telephoning was done, the officials summoned, and everything put in order.
"What I really started over to see you about," then said Bob to Welton, "is this matter of the Modoc Company." He went on to explain fully Amy's plan for checkmating Baker. "You see, if I get in my word first, Baker is as much implicated as you are, and it won't do him any good to turn state's evidence."
"I don't see as that helps me," remarked Welton gloomily.
"Baker might be willing to put himself in any position," said Bob; "but I doubt if he'll care to take the risk of criminal punishment. I think this will head him off completely; but if it doesn't, every move he makes to save his own skin saves yours too."
"It may do some good," agreed Welton. "Try it."
"I've already written Baker. But I didn't want you to think I was starting up the bloodhounds against you without some blame good reason."
"I'd know that anyway, Bobby," said Welton kindly. He stared moodily at the stovepipe. "This is getting too thick for an old-timer," he broke out at last. "I'm just a plain, old-fashioned lumberman, and all I know is to cut lumber. I pass this mess up. I wired your father he'd better come along out."
"Is he coming?" asked Bob eagerly.
"I just got a message over the 'phone from the telegraph office. He'll be in White Oaks as fast as he can get there. Didn't I tell you?"
"Wire him aboard train to go through to Fremont, and that we'll meet him there," said Bob instantly. "It's getting about time to beard the lion in his den."
The coroner's inquest detained Bob over until the week following. In it Amy's testimony as to the gun-man's appearance and evident intention was quite sufficient to excuse Ware's shooting; and the fact that Oldham, as he was still known, instead of Saleratus Bill, received the bullet was evidently sheer unavoidable accident. Bob's testimony added little save corroboration. As soon as he could get away, he took the road to Fremont.
Orde was awaiting his son at the station. Bob saw the straight, heavy figure, the tanned face with the snow-white moustache, before the train had come to a stop. Full of eagerness, he waved his hat over the head of the outraged porter barricaded on the lower steps by his customary accumulation of suit cases.
"Hullo, dad! Hullo, there!" he shouted again and again, quite oblivious to the amusement of the other passengers over this tall and bronzed young man's enthusiasm.
Orde caught sight of his son at last; his face lit up, and he, too, swung his hat. A moment later they had clasped hands.
After the first greetings, Bob gave his suit case in charge to the hotel bus-man.
"We'll take a little walk up the street and talk things over," he suggested.
They sauntered slowly up the hill and down the side streets beneath the pepper and acacia trees of Fremont's beautiful thoroughfares. So absorbed did they become that they did not realize in the slightest where they were going, so that at last they had topped the ridge and, from the stretch of the Sunrise Drive, they looked over into the cañon.
"So you've been getting into trouble, have you?" chaffed Orde, as they left the station.
"I don't know about that," Bob rejoined. "I do know that there are quite a number of people in trouble."
Orde laughed.
"Tell me about this Welton difficulty," said he. "Frank Taylor has our own matters well in hand. The opposition won't gain much by digging up that old charge against the integrity of our land titles. We'll count that much wiped off the slate."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Bob heartily. "Well, the trouble with Mr. Welton is that the previous administration held him up—" He detailed the aspects of the threatened bribery case; while Orde listened without comment. "So," he concluded, "it looked at first as if they rather had him, if I testified. It had me guessing. I hated the thought of getting a man like Mr. Welton in trouble of that sort over a case in which he was no way interested."
"What did you decide?" asked Orde curiously.
"I decided to testify."
"That's right."
"I suppose so. I felt a little better about it, because they had me in the same boat. That let me out in my own feelings, naturally."
"How?" asked Orde swiftly.
"There had been trouble up there between Plant—you remember I wrote you of the cattle difficulties?"
"With Simeon Wright? I know all that."
"Well, one of the cattlemen was ruined by Plant's methods; his wife and child died from want of care on that account. He was the one who killed Plant; you remember that."
"Yes."
"I happened to be near and I helped him escape."
"And some one connected with the Modoc Company was a witness," conjectured Orde. "Who was it?"
"A man who went under the name of Oldham. A certain familiarity puzzled me for a long time. Only the other day I got it. He was Mr. Newmark."
"Newmark!" cried Orde, stopping short and staring fixedly at his son.
"Yes; the man who was your partner when I was a very small boy. You remember?"
"Remember!" repeated Orde; then in tones of great energy: "He and I both have reason to remember well enough! Where is he now? I can put a stop to him in about two jumps!"
"You won't need to," said Bob quietly; "he's dead—shot last week."
For some moments nothing more was said, while the two men trudged beneath the hanging peppers near the entrance to Sunrise Drive.
"I always wondered why he had it in for me, and why he acted so queerly," Bob broke the silence at last. "He seemed to have a special and personal enmity for me. I always felt it, but I couldn't make it out."
"He had plenty of reasons for that. But it's funny Welton didn't recognize the whelp."
"Mr. Welton never saw him," Bob explained—"that is, until Newmark was dead. Then he recognized him instantly. What was it all about?"
Orde indicated the bench on the cañon's edge.
"Let's sit," said he. "Newmark and I made our start together. For eight years we worked together and built up a very decent business. Then, all at once, I discovered that he was plotting systematically to do me out of every cent we had made. It was the most cold-blooded proposition I ever ran across."
"Couldn't you prove it on him?" asked Bob.
"I could prove it all right; but the whole affair made me sick. He'd always been the closest friend, in a way, I had ever had; and the shock of discovering what he really was drove everything else out of my head. I was young then. It seemed to me that all I wanted was to wipe the whole affair off the slate, to get it behind me, to forget it—so I let him go."
"I don't believe I'd have done that. Seems to me I'd have had to blow off steam," Bob commented.
Orde smiled reminiscently.
"I blew off steam,"[8]said he. "It was rather fantastic; but I actually believe it was one of the most satisfactory episodes in my life. I went around to his place—he lived rather well in bachelor quarters, which was a new thing in those days—and locked the door and told him just why I was going to let him off. It tickled him hugely—for about a minute. Then I finished up by giving him about the very worst licking he ever heard tell of."
"Was that what you told him?" cried Bob.
"What?"
"Did you say those words to him?—'I'm going to give you the very worst licking you ever heard tell of'?"
"Why, I believe I did."
Bob threw back his head and laughed.
"So did I!" he cried; and then, after a moment, more soberly. "I think, incidentally, it saved my life."
"Now what are you driving at?" asked Orde.
"Listen, this is funny: Newmark had me kidnapped by one of his men, and lugged off to a little valley in the mountains. The idea was to keep me there until after the trial, so my testimony would not appear. You see, none of our side knew I had that testimony. I hadn't told anybody, because I had been undecided as to what I was going to do."
Orde whistled.
"I got away, and had quite a time getting home. I'll tell you all the details some other time. On the road I met Newmark. I was pretty mad, so I lit into him stiff-legged. After a few words he got scared and pulled a gun on me. I was just mad enough to keep coming, and I swear I believe he was just on the point of shooting, when I said those very same words: 'I'm going to give you the very worst licking you ever heard tell of.' He turned white as a sheet and dropped his gun. I thought he was a coward; but I guess it was conscience and luck. Now, wouldn't that come and get you?"
"Did you?" asked Orde.
"Did I what?"
"Give him that licking?"
"I sure did start out to; but I couldn't bring myself to more than shake him up a little."
Orde rose, stretching his legs.
"What are your plans now?"
"To see Baker. I'm going to tell him that on the first indications of his making trouble I'm going to enter complaint for bribery againstbothhim and Mr. Welton. You see, I was there too. Think it'll work?"
"The best way is to go and see."
"Come on," said Bob.