The date-line upon the message gave the sending point as San Francisco.
"They wrote _you_ a letter offering to buy?" said Lee thoughtfully, his
eyes rising slowly from the paper in his fingers. "How'd it happen
they didn't write to _her_?"
"Well, it's a natural enough mistake, isn't it? Knowing that she and I
were both part-owners, knowing that we were both here, isn't it quite
to be expected that they would write to the man instead of to the
woman? Of course I gave her the letter as soon as I had opened it."
"Of course," answered Lee.
But his thoughts were not with his answer. They were with Bayne
Trevors. He knew that Trevors had long ago sold to these people; he
knew, too, that at least two of the heavy shareholders in the Western
Lumber Company were interested in Doan, Rockwell & Haight. Tom
Rockwell himself was second vice-president of the lumber company.
"Have you had any other word from Miss Sanford?" he asked.
"No."
"Know who her lawyers are?"
"No. I don't."
"Anything in her papers here that would tell us?"
"No. Her papers are in the safe yonder and it's locked and I don't
know the combination."
"Know what hotel she is stopping at in the city?"
"No. Look here, Bud; what are you driving at? I don't get you."
"No?" answered Lee absently.
What Bud Lee was thinking was: "Here are too many coincidences!"
Little things, each one in itself safe from suspicion. But when he
meditated that the offer had come from this particular firm, that it
had come just a few days before Judith's first departure from the
ranch, that it had been addressed not to her but to Hampton, so that he
must have the opportunity to read it, that she had been called suddenly
to the city, that that call had come after the house was quiet, its
occupants in bed, that no letter had come since she had left, that no
one knew where to reach her--when he passed all of these things in
review the bitterness in his heart died under them and the first
anxiety sprang up anew, grown almost into fear for her.
"There's just one thing, Hampton," he said, his eyes hard on the boy's
face. "We don't sell a single hoof in the morning. Not a cow nor a
horse until Judith is here herself."
Hampton, new in his role of general manager, flushed hotly, his own
eyes showing fight.
"I like you, Lee," he said sharply, his tone that of master to man.
"And I don't want us to quarrel. But Judith wired me to sell, I've
wired the buyers an acceptance and we do sell in the morning!"
For a full minute Bud Lee stood stone still, staring into Hampton's
face. Then, tossing the telegram to the table, he turned and went out.
His face had gone suddenly white.
"They've got you somehow, Judith girl," he whispered through tense
lips. "But the fight is still to be made. And, by God, there's a day
of squaring accounts coming for a man named Bayne Trevors!"
He went to the bunk-house, neither seeing Marcia nor hearing her when
she called after him, and with a word to Carson brought the irate
cattle foreman hurriedly outside.