Out of the few scanty details which seemed to him to have any bearing
upon the thing he sought to know, Dick Farley strove to piece together a
chain of evidence which his brain could accept as pointing to the guilt
or to the innocence of James Dalton. As he drew slowly away from the
cabin and toward the cliffs which fell away to the lake, he arranged in
mind these things in a sort of logical order:
1. There must have been some strong motive for the killing of his
partner. If Dalton’s knife driven by Dalton’s powerful hand had caused
Johnny Watson’s death, what motive could have moved Dalton to the act?
This point he considered a long time. It was possible that these two men
had known each other years before; that they had been enemies; that
revenge had steeled the murderer’s arm. But it did not seem probable.
There was something a great deal more likely.
Could it not be that Dalton, although he denied the presence of gold in
the valley, had stumbled upon the same streak which Johnny had found a
month ago—the Cup of Gold? That he had discovered Johnny’s tracks, had
foreseen that he would return with pack-horses, and had killed him
rather than that an outsider should come into his valley and steal “his”
gold? But why, then, had he not killed Johnny’s partner as well?
2. The crime had been committed with a knife, unusually broad-bladed.
Dalton wore such a knife.
3. Something had made Dalton tell his daughter upon the day of the
murder that they were going to leave the Devil’s Pocket and go back into
the world. What was it? Did it have any bearing on the case? If not, it
was one of those odd coincidences which occur sometimes, and Farley did
not believe very much in coincidences.
4. The man who had committed the crime had stolen the two horses, and
had hidden them somewhere in the mountains to the southwest of the
valley. Dalton had gone away into these same mountains and had been gone
five days. Why had he gone? He had not had time to reach any of the
settlements; he had brought back no sugar, no cloth.
5. Dalton had lived many years in a seclusion which was very like
hiding. He looked the part of a man who had never had a sick day in his
life. He was not here because the doctors had sent him. He was a man of
culture, a man who had traveled and seen much of the world. He loved his
daughter. Why, then, had he suffered this long exile? Why had he made
her endure it?
These matters rose above other considerations in Farley’s mind. And in
the end he saw no way of arriving at any kind of certainty until he had
gone back to pick up the old trail; until he had found the horses; until
he had seen if Dalton’s tracks led to them and back from them to the
cabin.
He stopped for a moment at the top of the cliffs and turned to look back
at the cabin. He saw the girl standing there alone, her eyes following
him; saw her hand go up swiftly as he turned to wave to her; remembered
what she had done for him; saw again the clean heart and budding woman’s
soul which she had not thought of hiding, had not known how to hide from
him. Lifting his hat to her, he hurried down the cliffs and out of
sight.
“It would kill her,” he muttered. And then, his eyes grown suddenly hard
as he tried to shut her out of his mind: “Never mind, Johnny, old
pardner. It’s all in the cards, and we’ll play it out. If he did it,
he’ll pay for it!”
But when night came to him in the edge of the mountains and he sat
brooding over his camp-fire he could not drive her out of his wandering
thoughts. He saw justice on one hand, and loyalty to one’s partner; and
on the other he saw the face of a girl who was going to be happy, or
broken upon her first great sorrow—and it would be his act to decide her
life for her. He bowed his head in his two hands, caught powerless in
the irony of fate.
For a week Dick Farley sought, almost without rest to body and brain, to
work out the puzzle which had been set before him. He had gone almost
back to where he had buried Johnny Watson before he found the trail of
the two stolen horses. This he had followed away from the valley through
narrow cañons, over rocky passes, for two days.
As he had known from his partner’s words, there was little water here.
He thought more than once that he would be driven back to replenish the
bottle he had carried with him. But the man who had driven the horses
here had known the country; and following the trail, turning with it
north or south of its general course, Farley found enough water in small
springs and slender streams to keep the life in him and make his
progress possible.
Fortunately the country was filled with small game, the quail, hare,
grouse and squirrels having more curiosity than fear, coming close
enough for him to kill with his revolvers what he required for food.
He came at last upon the two horses in a small, steep-walled valley set
like a cup in the mountains. Here there was much rich, dry grass, and a
narrow stream wandering through it. With little trouble he found the
pack-saddle where it had been thrown into a clump of manzanitas.
Remembering for the first time the map which Johnny had told him was
hidden in a saddle-blanket, he found it readily. With a swift, cursory
glance at it he put it into his pocket.
“To get the horses where they were left in the main trail,” he muttered
to himself, “to bring them here, then to go back to the lake would take
a man just about five days—the time that Dalton was gone.”
It was another point, a further link in the chain; but, like the other
links, it was not strong enough to bear the burden of certainty. He must
find other tracks—the tracks the man had made when he left the horses
here. He must follow them. If they led straight back over the hills to
the lake, he would know. And he had little doubt that he would find
them, and that they would carry him once more to the Dalton cabin.
* * * * *
And now came the slowest, the hardest of his work. To follow the trail
left by two horses was comparatively simple. To track a man over these
mountains, across hard ground and dry gully, was another matter.
It was certain that the man Dalton, or a possible other, had not gone
back over the same trail. It was devious, turning aside for steep cañons
which a horse could not climb but which a man could, full of many twists
and turns. A man on foot would take a shorter way. And until he knew
beyond a doubt that that man had been Virginia Dalton’s father, he could
not tell whether to look upon the eastern edge of the tiny valley for
it, upon the western, northern or southern. But believing more and more
that the trail would lead toward the east, he looked where he thought to
find it.
And in an hour after finding the horses he picked up the other trail—the
tracks made by the man who had brought them here. He saw the deep print
of a boot-heel in the moist soil along the creek, found another track a
few feet farther on, then another—all leading toward the east—toward
Devil’s Pocket.
A glance at the encircling hills showed him where the tracks must lead,
where there was a little nature-made pass, leading over their crests
which a man might follow; and he pushed ahead in that direction,
positive that he would find the tracks there if there were any loose
soil to keep them. He saw readily that he must leave the horses where
they were for the present.
It took him another hour to climb up to the gap in the hills. The
darkness was coming on, but there was light enough for him to see that
the same heavy boots which had left their imprint in the soft dirt by
the creek had passed here. He had done a long day’s work; his side was
paining him again, the night was very near. So he built his fire here
and made his bed of fir-boughs.
In the first light of the dawn he breakfasted and moved on once more
toward Devil’s Pocket. Everywhere underfoot was a thick mat of
pine-needles, upon which a man’s foot would leave no sign. But the
natural pass in which he had camped led straight on and into a cañon
upon the other side of the little ridge; and where the soil had sifted
down from the cañon sides to lie here and there among the rocks strewing
the bottom of the ravine was the imprint of the heavy boots again. Only
infrequently stopping to assure himself that he was not going wrong, he
made what haste he could back toward the lake. And he had gone perhaps
five miles before he came upon a discovery which caused him to stop,
frowning, wondering.
He was in a small clearing, sandy-floored. The tracks were here, still
leading east. But no longer was there the single trail. Here, plainly
outlined, were the prints left by two men. They were side by side, alike
fresh, a very few days old.
Farley had just come down a long rocky slope into the clearing, and did
not know where the second man’s path had met the first. There was little
use in going back, in trying to find out. He sat down, filled his pipe
and tried to make out the meaning of this new complication. Who was this
second man? Where had he come from? Where was he going? Had he been with
Dalton, or had he been trailing Dalton, or had Dalton been following
him?
In the end he could not see that the new tracks made any great
difference. If the trail he was following led on to the lake, to
Dalton’s cabin, the thing was clear enough.
Down the long slope of the mountainside from the clearing, into the
rocky bed of the ravine, the only logical way for a man to follow, and
out into a miniature valley below, he continued without looking for the
tracks which he knew the hard, broken ground would not show had he
looked.
It was two miles before he again found the boot-tracks in a bit of soft
soil. And here again had one man, only one man, passed. The other, the
second, had evidently turned aside across the rock-strewn side of the
mountain—had gone on his way, prospecting.