It was after eight o'clock when Tripp rode in on a sweat-wet horse.
Judith met him in the courtyard, giving him her two hands impulsively.
"I'm so glad you've come, Doc!" she cried softly. "Oh, you don't know
how glad--yet."
She called José to take Tripp's mount and then led the way into the
great living-room where deep cushions and leather chairs made for
comfort.
"I'll give you time to draw a second breath," she told him, forcing
into her tone a lightness which she did not quite feel, even though a
surge of satisfaction had warmed her at the first thud of his horse's
hoofs. "Then we'll talk."
She switched on the lights and turned to look at Tripp. He was the
same little old Doc Tripp, she noted. His wiry body scarcely bigger
than a boy's of fourteen, he was a man of fifty whose face, like his
body, suggested the boy with bright, eager eyes and a frank, friendly
smile.
"Prettier than ever, eh, Judy?" Tripp cocked his head to one side and
gave his unqualified approval of the slim, supple body, and superb
carriage of this girl of the mountains, warming to the vivid, vital
beauty of the rosy face. "Been driving those cow-college boys down at
Berkeley plumb crazy, I'll bet a prize colt!"
Judith laughed at him, watched his slight form disappear in the wide
arms of a chair which seemed fairly to smother him in its embrace.
Then from her own nook by the fireplace she opened her heart to him:
"It's not just that Trevors has crippled me by taking all of my milkers
away; not just that he has come near doing I don't know how much harm
in having Crowdy turn those calves with the lung-worm out into the
fields with the others; not just that during the last few months, he
has lost money for us right and left; not just that Benny, the cook,
has tried to fire the range."
"What's that last?" said Tripp quickly. "Tried to smoke you out, huh?"
She told him briefly. How she had first seen the smoke as she came
back to the ranch-house; how she had sent José on the run to get some
of the other hands to see that the fire did not spread; how, a little
while ago, Carson, the cattle foreman, had come in and assured her that
the damage was negligible.
"It was just a brush fire," said Judith. "Thank Heaven, things are
pretty green yet. Carson says it might have been lighted by Benny,
who, it seems, is one of Trevors's hirelings and not above this sort of
thing; or it might have been accidentally started by some careless
hunter. Anyway, and that's enough for me, the fire broke out close to
the trail that Benny travelled on his way to the Western Lumber camp.
But it isn't just these things which have set me to wondering, Doc.
What I want to know is this: in how many other, still undiscovered
ways, has Trevors been knifing us? And what else will he have ready to
spring on us now?"
"Just what do you mean?" Tripp looked a her keenly.
"This case of lung-worm, to begin with: where did it come from?"
"Imported," said Tripp. "Trevors bought those calves, or at least four
of the sick ones, last month. Brought them in from somewhere down the
river. Smuggled 'em in, so far as I am concerned. Never gave me a
chance to look them over." He paused a second. "Specially imported, I
might say."
"I knew it!" cried Judith. "That's the sort of thing I am afraid of.
If he has gone to the limit of introducing one disease among our
cattle, what other plagues has he brought to the ranch? Has he
imported any other outside stock?"
"No. He's been busier selling at a sacrifice than buying, just as I
wrote you. Never another head has he bought lately--unless," and
Tripp's eyes twinkled at her, "you count pigeons!"
"Pigeons!" repeated Judith.
Tripp nodded.
"Funny, isn't it," he went on lightly--"that a man like Bayne Trevors,
hard as nails and as free of sentiment as a mule, should fancy little
cooing, innocent-like pigeons? You'll hear them in the morning."
But Judith was not to be distracted by Tripp's talk. She smiled at
him, however, to show him that she had understood and appreciated the
purpose back of his light words.
"We're all going to have our hands full for a spell, Doc," was what she
said. "To Trevors, with a free swing here, it must have appeared
rather a simple matter to make so complete a failure as to force us,
encumbered as we are, into selling out to the highest bidder inside the
year. Especially when he counted young Pollock Hampton as a man
without business experience and Judith Sanford as a girl without
brains! But, Doc, he must have known, too, that at any time there
might occur the very thing which has happened--that he'd lose his job.
He strikes me as a rather long-headed man, doesn't he you? Now, a man
who saw ahead, figuring on this very contingency, would have more than
one trick up his sleeve. We've caught him, luckily, at the sick-calf
game, before it is too late. I think that the obvious thing for you to
do is to make certain that all the rest of the stock are in shape.
Will you begin to-morrow making a thorough investigation?"
"Yes," he answered. "You're right there, Judith. There's nothing like
making sure."
"He's not through with us," continued the girl thoughtfully; "you could
read that in the look of his jaw and eye when he left. Just what he
stands to make on his play, I don't know. But I do know that the
Western Lumber crowd is offering us only a quarter of what they'd be
willing to pay if they had to. That means that they could afford to
bribe Bayne Trevors pretty heavily and still save half a million on the
deal if he succeeded in the thing he has begun."
"In his way," admitted Tripp thoughtfully, "Trevors is a big man. Big
men cost big money. And, besides, it looks to me as though he were a
heavy stockholder in the Western Lumber. He'd stand to win two ways."
"Another thing I want you to do," Judith went on, "is to try to locate
all of dad's old men whom Trevors let go. Johnny Hodge and Kelley and
Harper and Tod Bruce. We'll need them. We've got to have men that
crooked money can't buy."
"Aren't you magnifying things, Judith?" asked Tripp quietly. "There's
such a thing as law in this country, you know."
But she shook her head.
"Maybe I am seeing the dangers too big. But I don't think so. And it
will be a lot better for Blue Lake ranch if I see them that way at the
beginning. And as for the law, it costs money. I'm not sure that
Trevors or the lumber people would be averse to getting us involved in
a lot of legal intricacies. Oh, he has been careful not to leave any
definite proof behind him."
"You hit the bell that time!" laughed Tripp, and Judith smiled with him
as there came to their ears the faint tinkle of the telephone-bell in
the office.
Judith excused herself and hastened to answer the summons. Hastened
because she wanted to be back with Tripp as soon as might be. So,
knowing her way so well about the big house, she went quickly through
the dark hall-way without turning aside to switch on the lights and
came into the office, dimly lighted by the stars shining in through the
windows.
"Doc!" Her voice rang out suddenly and Tripp sprang to his feet,
wondering what had put that note into her exclamation. "Doc! Come
here, quick!"
He ran into the hall that was suddenly illuminated as at last Judith's
groping hand found the office switch. He saw Judith running ahead of
him, out of the door opening on to the veranda and down into the
courtyard.
"What is it?" he asked sharply.
"There was some one here," she told him quickly. "He went out that
way, I think. Look through the lilacs."
She ran on one way, Tripp hurrying the other, wondering. They saw the
lilacs standing still in the starlight, saw the thick shadows thrown by
the columns and grape-covered trellises, heard the murmuring of the
fountain.
"José, perhaps," suggested Tripp, coming at last to her side.
"No!" cried Judith. "It wasn't. It was somebody in his stocking feet,
standing in the hallway, listening to us. I heard him run before me; I
saw him for a second, framed against the square of the window as he
slipped through and out on the veranda. Who could it have been, Doc?"
But a close search through the shrubbery showed them nothing. It was
clear that if a man had been listening at the door he could have had
ample opportunity to slip away into the darkness. He would not be
loitering here now.
The telephone-bell was still insistently ringing and they turned back
to the office.
"Judy," said Tripp solicitously, "don't you go and get nerves, now."
"You think I imagined the whole thing!" She looked at him with clear,
confident eyes. "Don't you fool yourself for one little minute, Doc
Tripp. I'm not the imagining kind--yet!"
She snatched up the telephone instrument.
"Hello," said Judith. "Who is it?"
It was the telegraph operator in Rocky Bend. A message for Miss Judith
Sanford from Pollock Hampton, San Francisco. And the message ran:
What were you thinking of to chuck Trevors? Thoroughly excellent man.
You should have consulted me. Don't do anything more until I come.
Send conveyance to meet Saturday train. Bringing five guests with me.