Louis Bassett, when he started to the old Livingstone ranch, now
the Wasson place, was carefully turning over in his mind David's
participation in the escape of Judson Clark. Certain phases of it were
quite clear, provided one accepted the fact that, following a heavy
snowfall, an Easterner and a tenderfoot had gone into the mountains
alone, under conditions which had caused the posse after Judson Clark to
turn back and give him up for dead.
Had Donaldson sent him there, knowing he was a medical man? If he had,
would Maggie Donaldson not have said so? She had said “a man outside
that she had at first thought was a member of the searching party.”
Evidently, then, Donaldson had not prepared her to expect medical
assistance.
Take the other angle. Say David Livingstone had not been sent for. Say
he knew nothing of the cabin or its occupants until he stumbled on them.
He had sold the ranch, distributed his brother's books, and apparently
the townspeople at Dry River believed that he had gone back home.
Then what had taken him, clearly alone and having certainly given the
impression of a departure for the East, into the mountains? To hunt? To
hunt what, that he went about it secretly and alone?
Bassett was inclined to the Donaldson theory, finally. John Donaldson
would have been wanting a doctor, and not wanting one from Norada. He
might have heard of this Eastern medical man at Dry River, have gone to
him with his story, even have taken him part of the way. The situation
was one that would have a certain appeal. It was possible, anyhow:
But instead of clarifying the situation Bassett's visit at the
Wasson place brought forward new elements which fitted neither of the
hypotheses in his mind.
To Wasson himself, whom he met on horseback on the road into the ranch,
he gave the same explanation he had given to the store-keeper's wife.
Wasson was a tall man in chaps and a Stetson, and he was courteously
interested.
“Bill and Jake are still here,” he said. “They're probably in for dinner
now, and I'll see you get a chance to talk to them. I took them over
with the ranch. Property, you say? Well, I hope it's better land than he
had here.”
He turned his horse and rode beside the car to the house.
“Comes a little late to do Henry Livingstone much good,” he said. “He's
been lying in the Dry River graveyard for about ten years. Not much
mourned either. He was about as close-mouthed and uncompanionable as
they make them.”
The description Wasson had applied to Henry Livingstone, Bassett himself
applied to the two ranch hands later on, during their interview. It
could hardly have been called an interview at all, indeed, and after a
time Bassett realized that behind their taciturnity was suspicion. They
were watching him, undoubtedly; he rather thought, when he looked away,
that once or twice they exchanged glances. He was certain, too, that
Wasson himself was puzzled.
“Speak up, Jake,” he said once, irritably. “This gentleman has come a
long way. It's a matter of some property.”
“What sort of property?” Jake demanded. Jake was the spokesman of the
two.
“That's not important,” Bassett observed, easily. “What we want to know
is if Henry Livingstone had any family.”
“He had a brother.”
“No one else?”
“Then it's up to me to trail the brother,” Bassett observed. “Either of
you remember where he lived?”
“Somewhere in the East.”
Bassett laughed.
“That's a trifle vague,” he commented good-humoredly. “Didn't you boys
ever mail any letters for him?”
He was certain again that they exchanged glances, but they continued
to present an unbroken front of ignorance. Wasson was divided between
irritation and amusement.
“What'd I tell you?” he asked. “Like master like man. I've been here ten
years, and I've never got a word about the Livingstones out of either of
them.”
“I'm a patient man.” Bassett grinned. “I suppose you'll admit that one
of you drove David Livingstone to the train, and that you had a fair
idea then of where he was going?”
He looked directly at Jake, but Jake's face was a solid mask. He made no
reply whatever.
From that moment on Bassett was certain that David had not been driven
away from the ranch at all. What he did not know, and was in no way to
find out, was whether the two ranch hands knew that he had gone into the
mountains, or why. He surmised back of their taciturnity a small mystery
of their own, and perhaps a fear. Possibly David's going was as much a
puzzle to them as to him. Conceivably, during the hours together on the
range, or during the winter snows, for ten years they had wrangled and
argued over a disappearance as mysterious in its way as Judson Clark's.
He gave up at last, having learned certain unimportant facts: that the
recluse had led a lonely life; that he had never tried to make the place
more than carry itself; that he was a student, and that he had no other
peculiarities.
“Did he ever say anything that would lead you to believe that he had any
family, outside of his brother and sister? That is, any direct heir?”
Bassett asked.
“He never talked about himself,” said Jake. “If that's all, Mr. Wasson,
I've got a steer bogged down in the north pasture and I'll be going.”
On the Wassons' invitation he remained to lunch, and when the ranch
owner excused himself and rode away after the meal he sat for some
time on the verandah, with Mrs. Wasson sewing and his own eyes fixed
speculatively on the mountain range, close, bleak and mysterious.
“Strange thing,” he commented. “Here's a man, a book-lover and student,
who comes out here, not to make living and be a useful member of the
community, but apparently to bury himself alive. I wonder, why.”
“A great many come out here to get away from something, Mr. Bassett.”
“Yes, to start again. But this man never started again. He apparently
just quit.”
Mrs. Wasson put down her sewing and looked at him thoughtfully.
“Did the boys tell you anything about the young man who visited Henry
Livingstone now and then?”
“No. They were not very communicative.”
“I suppose they wouldn't tell. Yet I don't see, unless--” She stopped,
lost in some field of speculation where he could not follow her. “You
know, we haven't much excitement here, and when this boy was first seen
around the place--he was here mostly in the summer--we decided that he
was a relative. I don't know why we considered him mysterious, unless
it was because he was hardly ever seen. I don't even know that that was
deliberate. For that matter Mr. Livingstone wasn't much more than a name
to us.”
“You mean, a son?”
“Nobody knew. He was here only now and then.”
Bassett moved in his chair and looked at her.
“How old do you suppose this boy was?” he asked.
“He was here at different times. When Mr. Livingstone died I suppose he
was in his twenties. The thing that makes it seem odd to me is that the
men didn't mention him to you.”
“I didn't ask about him, of course.”
She went on with her sewing, apparently intending to drop the matter;
but the reporter felt that now and then she was subjecting him to a
sharp scrutiny, and that, in some shrewd woman-fashion, she was trying
to place him.
“You said it was a matter of some property?”
“Yes.”
“But it's rather late, isn't it? Ten years?”
“That's what makes it difficult.”
There was another silence, during which she evidently made her decision.
“I have never said this before, except to Mr. Wasson. But I believe he
was here when Henry Livingstone died.”
Her tone was mysterious, and Bassett stared at her.
“You don't think Livingstone was murdered!”
“No. He died of heart failure. There was an autopsy. But he had a bad
cut on his head. Of course, he may have fallen--Bill and Jake were away.
They'd driven some cattle out on the range. It was two days before he
was found, and it would have been longer if Mr. Wasson hadn't ridden out
to talk to him about buying. He found him dead in his bed, but there was
blood on the floor in the next room. I washed it up myself.”
“Of course,” she added, when Bassett maintained a puzzled silence, “I
may be all wrong. He might have fallen in the next room and dragged
himself to bed. But he was very neatly covered up.”
“It's your idea, then, that this boy put him into the bed?”
“I don't know. He wasn't seen about the place. He's never been here
since. But the posse found a horse with the Livingstone brand, saddled,
dead in Dry River Canyon when it was looking for Judson Clark. Of
course, that was a month later. The men here, Bill and Jake, claimed it
had wandered off, but I've often wondered.”
After a time Bassett got up and took his leave. He was confused and
irritated. Here, whether creditably or not, was Dick Livingstone
accounted for. There was a story there, probably, but not the story he
was after. This unknown had been at the ranch when Henry Livingstone
died, had perhaps been indirectly responsible for his death. He had,
witness the horse, fled after the thing happened. Later on, then, David
Livingstone had taken him into his family. That was all.
Except for that identification of Gregory's, and for the photograph of
Judson Clark.... For a moment he wondered if the two, Jud Clark and the
unknown, could be the same. But Dry River would have known Clark. That
couldn't be.
He almost ditched the car on his way back to Norada, so deeply was he
engrossed in thought.