Hidden Gold

CHAPTER XV

"I shouldn't think that you had any gift that way."

"That's got nothing to do with it," he laughed. "It's always like that. Haven't you noticed how nearly every man thinks he's missed his calling; that if he'd only gone in for something else he'd have been a rattling genius at it? Just to show you! I've got a hand over at the ranch, a fellow named Barry, who can tie down a steer in pretty close to the record. He's a born cowman, if I ever saw one, but do you suppose he thinks that's his line?"

"Doesn't he?" she asked politely. One of the secrets of her popularity lay in her willingness to feed a story along with deft little interjections of interest.

"He does not. Poetry! Shakespeare! That's his 'forty'! At night he gets out a book and reads Hamlet to the rest of the boys. Thinks that if he'd ever hit Broadway with a show, he'd set the town on fire."

When Dorothy laughed heartily, as she now did, the sound of it was worth going miles to hear. There are all shades of temperament and character in laughter, which is the one thing of which we are least self-conscious; hers revealed not only a sense of humor, rare in her sex, but a blithe, happy nature, which made allies at once of those upon whose ears her merriment fell. Trowbridge's eyes sparkled with his appreciation of it.

"Well, maybe he would," she said, finally.

"Maybe I'll make good along with Sherlock Holmes." He winked at her as he slipped from his horse's back, on the edge of a rocky knoll, fronting the jack-pines. "This is the place, I reckon." His quick eyes had caught a dark stain on a flat rock, which the rain had failed to cleanse entirely of the dead herders' blood.

When Dorothy saw it, too, her mirth subsided. To her mind, the thought of death was most horrible, and especially so in the case of a murderous death, such as had befallen the sheep men. Not only was the thing horrible in itself, but still more so in its suggestion of the dangers which threatened her friends.

"Do hurry!" she begged. "There can't be anything here."

"Just a minute or two." Struck by the note of appeal in her voice, so unlike its lilt of the moment before, he added: "Ride on if you want to."

"No," she shuddered. "I'll wait, but please be quick."

It was well for her companion that she did wait, or at least that she was with him for, when he had inspected the immediate vicinity of the shooting, he stepped backward from the top of the knoll into a little, brush-filled hollow, in which lay a rattlesnake. Deeply interested in his search, he did not hear the warning rattle, and Dorothy might not have noticed it either had not her pony raised its head, with a start and a snort. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the snake and called out sharply.

"Look out, behind you, Lem!"

There are men, calling themselves conjurors, who perform prodigies of agility with coins, playing-cards, and other articles of legerdemain, but they are not so quick as was Trowbridge in springing sidewise from the menacing snake. In still quicker movement, the heavy Colt at his side leaped from its holster. The next second the rattle had ceased forever, for the snake's head had been neatly cut from its body.

"Close call! Thanks!" Trowbridge slid his weapon back into its resting place and smiled up at her.

So close, indeed, had the call been that, coming upon the dreadful associations of the spot, Dorothy was unnerved. Her skin turned a sickly white and her lips were trembling, but not more so than were the flanks of the horses, which seemed to be in an agony of fear. When the girl saw Trowbridge pick up a withered stick and coolly explore the recesses of a small hole near which the snake had been coiled, she rebelled.

"I'm not going to stay here another minute," she declared hotly.

"Just a second. There may be another one.... Oh, all right, go on, then," he called out, as she whirled her pony and started off. "I'll catch you. Ride slow!"

He looked after her with a smile of amusement, before renewing his efforts with the stick, holding his bridle reins with one hand so that his horse could not follow hers. To his disappointment there seemed to be nothing in the hole, but his prodding suddenly developed an amazing fact. He was on the point of dropping the stick and mounting his horse, when he noticed a small piece of metal in the leaves and grass at the mouth of the hole. It was an empty cartridge shell.

"By Glory!" he exclaimed, as he examined it. "A clew, or I'm a sinner!"

Swinging into his saddle, he raced after Dorothy, shouting to her as he rode. In her pique, she would not answer his hail, or turn in her saddle; but he was too exultant to care. He was concerned only with overtaking her that he might tell her what he had found.

"For the love of Mike!" he said, when by a liberal use of his spurs he caught up with her. "What do you think this is, a circus?"

"You can keep up, can't you?" she retorted banteringly.

"Sure, I can keep up, all right." He reached out and caught her bridle rein, pulling her pony down to a walk in spite of her protests. "I want to show you something. You can't see it riding like a jockey. Look here!" He handed her the shell. "You see, if I had come when you wanted me to, I wouldn't have found it. That's what's called the detective instinct, I reckon," he added, with a grin. "Guess I'm some little Sherlock, after all."

"Whose is it?" She turned the shell over in her palm a trifle gingerly.

"Look!" He took it from her and pointed out where it had been dented by the firing-pin. "I reckon you wouldn't know, not being up in fire-arms. The hammer that struck this shell didn't hit true; not so far off as to miss fire, you understand, but it ain't in line exactly. That tells me a lot."

"What does it tell you?" She looked up at him quickly.

"Well," he spoke slowly, "there ain't but one gun in Crawling Water that has that peculiarity, that I know of, and that one belongs, or did belong, to Tug Bailey."

She caught at his arm impulsively so that both horses were brought to a standstill.

"Then he shot Jensen, Lem?"

Her voice was tremulous with eagerness, for although she had never doubted Wade or Santry; had never thought for a moment that either man could have committed the crime, or have planned it, she wanted them cleared of the doubt in the eyes of the world. Her disappointment was acute when she saw that Trowbridge did not deem the shell to be convincing proof of Bailey's guilt.

"Don't go too fast now, Dorothy," he cautioned. "This shell proves that Bailey's gun was fired, but it doesn't prove that Bailey's finger pulled the trigger, or that the gun was aimed at Jensen. Bailey might have loaned the rifle to somebody, or he might have fired at a snake, like I did a few minutes ago."

"Oh, he might have done anything, of course. But the shell is some evidence, isn't it? It casts the doubt on Tug Bailey, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does that, all right. It casts it further than him." The cattleman spoke positively. "It's a clew, that's what it is. We've got a clew and we've got a motive, and we didn't have either of them yesterday."

"How do you suppose that shell got where you found it?" she asked, her voice full of hope.

"Bailey must have levered it out of his rifle, after the shooting, and it fell into that hole. You see,"—he could not resist making the triumphant point once more,—"if I hadn't stopped to look for another rattler, I never would have found it. Just that chance—just a little chance like that—throws the biggest criminals. Funny, ain't it?" But she was too preoccupied with the importance of the discovery to dwell on his gifts as a sleuth.

"What can we do about it, Lem?" She gave her pony her head and they began to move slowly. "What ought we to do?"

"I'll find this fellow, Bailey, and wring the truth out of him," he answered grimly; and her eyes sparkled. "If I'm not greatly mistaken, though, he was only the tool."

"Meaning that Moran...."

"And Rexhill," Trowbridge snapped. "They are the men higher up, and the game we're really gunning for. They hired Bailey to shoot Jensen so that the crime might be fastened on to Gordon. I believe that as fully as I'm alive this minute; the point is to prove it."

"Then we've no time to waste," she said, touching her pony with the quirt. "We mustn't loiter here. Suppose Bailey has been sent away?"

The thought of this caused them to urge their tired horses along at speed. Many times during the ride which followed Trowbridge looked admiringly at his companion as she rode on, untiringly, side by side with him. A single man himself, he had come to feel very tenderly toward her, but he had no hope of winning her. She had never been more than good friends with him, and he realized her feeling for Wade, but this knowledge did not make him less keen in his admiration of her.

"Good luck to you, Lem," she said, giving him her hand, as they paused at the head of Crawling Water's main street. "Let me know what you do as soon as you can. I'll be anxious."

He nodded.

"I know about where to find him, if he's in town. Oh, we're slowly getting it on them, Dorothy. We'll be ready to 'call' them pretty soon. Good-by!"

Tug Bailey, however, was not in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from the floor above.

"Wait a minute."

Trowbridge waited and the woman came down to him. He knew her by ill-repute, as did every man in the town, for she was Pansy Madder, one of the dance-hall habitués, good-looking enough by night to the inflamed fancy, but repulsive by day, with her sodden skin and hard eyes.

"You want to know where Tug is?" she demanded.

"Yes, where is he?"

"He's headed for Sheridan, I reckon. If he ain't headed there, he'll strike the railroad at some other point; him and that—Nellie Lewis, that he's skipped with." Her lusterless eyes were fired by the only thing that could fire them: her bitter jealousy.

"You're sure?" Trowbridge persisted, a little doubtfully.

"Sure? Of course, I'm sure. Say,"—she clutched at his arm as he turned away,—"if he's wanted for anything, bring him back here, will you? Promise me that! Let me"—her pale lips were twisted by an ugly smile—"get my hands on him!"

From the dance-hall, Trowbridge hastened to the jail to swear out a warrant for Bailey's arrest and to demand that Sheriff Thomas telegraph to Sheridan and to the two points above and below, Ranchester and Clearmont, to head off the fugitive there. Not knowing how far the Sheriff might be under the dominance of the Rexhill faction, the cattleman was not sure that he could count upon assistance from the official. He meant, if he saw signs of indecision, to do the telegraphing himself and to sign at the bottom of the message the name of every ranch owner in the district. That should be enough to awaken the law along the railroad without help from Thomas, and Trowbridge knew that such action would be backed up by his associates.

He had no trouble on this score, however, for Sheriff Thomas was away on the trail of a horse-thief, and the deputy in charge of the jail was of sturdier character than his chief.

"Will I help you, Lem?" he exclaimed. "Say, will a cat drink milk? You bet I'll help you. Between you and me, I've been so damned ashamed of what's been doing in this here office lately that I'm aching for a chance to square myself. I'll send them wires off immediate."

"I reckon you're due to be the next Sheriff in this county, Steve," Trowbridge responded gratefully. "There's going to be a change here before long."

"That so? Well, I ain't sayin' that I'd refuse, but I ain't doin' this as no favor, either, you understand. I'm doin' it because it's the law, the good old-fashioned, honest to Gawd, s'help me die, law!"

"That's the kind we want here—that, or no kind. So long, Steve!"

With a nod of relief, Trowbridge left the jail, well-satisfied that he had done a good turn for Wade, and pleased with himself for having lived so well up to the standards set by the detectives of popular fiction. Since Bailey had not had time to reach the railroad, his arrest was now almost a certainty, and once he was back in Crawling Water, a bucket of hot tar and a bundle of feathers, with a promise of immunity for himself, would doubtless be sufficient to extract a confession from him which would implicate Rexhill and Moran.

Feeling that he had earned the refreshment of a drink, the cattleman was about to enter the hotel when, to his consternation, he saw tearing madly down the street toward him Bill Santry, on a horse that had evidently been ridden to the very last spurt of endurance. He ran forward at once, for the appearance of the old man in Crawling Water, with a warrant for murder hanging over his head, could only mean that some tragedy had happened at the ranch.

"Hello, Lem!" Santry greeted him. "You're just the man I'm lookin' for."

"What's the trouble?" Trowbridge demanded.

"The boy!" The old plainsman slid from his horse, which could hardly keep its feet, but was scarcely more spent in body than its rider was in nerve. His face was twitching in a way that might have been ludicrous but for its significance. "They've ambushed him, I reckon. I come straight in after you, knowin' that you'd have a cooler head for this here thing than—than I have."

"My God!" The exclamation shot from Trowbridge like the crack of a gun. "How did it happen?"

Santry explained the details, in so far as he knew them, in a few breathless sentences. The old man was clearly almost beside himself with grief and rage, and past the capacity to act intelligently upon his own initiative. He had not been satisfied, he said, to remain behind at the ranch and let Wade go to the timber tract alone, and so after a period of indecision he had followed him. Near the edge of the timber he had come upon Wade's riderless horse, trailing broken bridle reins. He had followed the animal's tracks back to the point of the assault, but there was no sign of Wade, which fact indicated that he had been carried away by those who had overcome him.

"I could see by the tracks that there was a number of 'em; as many as five or six," the old man summed up. "I followed their sign as far as I could, but I lost it at the creek. Then I went back to the house and sent some of the boys out to scout around before I come down here after you."

"Where do you suppose they could have taken him?" Trowbridge asked. "They'd never dare bring him to town."

"Gawd knows, Lem! There's more pockets and drifts up in them hills than there is jack-rabbits. 'Tain't likely the boys'll find any new sign, leastways not in time; not before that —— of a Moran—it was him did it, damn him! I know it was. Lem, for Gawd's sake, what are we goin' to do?"

"The first thing to do, Bill, is to get you out of this town, before Thomas shows up and jumps you."

"I don't keer for myself. I'll shoot the...."

"Luckily, he's away just now," Trowbridge went on, ignoring the interruption. "Come with me!" He led the way into the hotel. "Frank," he said to the red-headed proprietor, "is Moran in town to-day?"

"Nope." The Irishman regarded Santry with interest. "He went out this morning with four or five men."

"Rexhill's here, ain't he?" Trowbridge asked then. "Tell him there's two gentlemen here to see him. Needn't mention any names. He doesn't know me."

When Santry, with the instinct of his breed, hitched his revolver to a more convenient position on his hip, Trowbridge reached out and took it away from him. He dared not trust the old man in his present mood. He intended to question the Senator, to probe him, perhaps to threaten him; but the time had not come to shoot him.

"I'll keep this for you, Bill," he said soothingly, and dropped the weapon into his coat pocket. "I'm going to take you up with me, for the sake of the effect of that face of yours, looking the way it does right now. But I'll do the talking, mind! It won't take long. We're going to act some, too."

Their visit had no visible effect upon Rexhill, however, who was too much master of himself to be caught off his guard in a game which had reached the point of constant surprise. His manner was not conciliatory, for the meeting was frankly hostile, but he did not appear to be perturbed by it. He had not supposed that the extremes he had sanctioned could be carried through without difficulty, and he was prepared to meet any attack that might be offered by the enemy.

"Senator Rexhill," Trowbridge introduced himself, "you've never met me. I'm from the Piah Creek country. My name is Trowbridge."

"Yes," the Senator nodded. "I've heard of you. I know your friend there by sight." He lingered slightly over the word "friend" as he glanced toward Santry, "There's a warrant out for him, I believe."

"Yes. There's a warrant out for one of your—friends, too, Tug Bailey," Trowbridge retorted dryly, hoping that something would eventuate from his repartee; but nothing did. If the news surprised Rexhill, as it must have, he did not show it. "I've just sworn it out," the rancher continued, "but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to tell you that Gordon Wade, whom you know, has been kidnaped."

Santry stifled an exclamation of rage in answer to a quick look from his friend.

"Kidnaped from his own range in broad daylight," the latter went on. "I represent his friends, who mean to find him right away, and it has occurred to me that you may be able to assist us in our search."

"Just why has that idea occurred to you?" Rexhill asked calmly, as though out of mere curiosity. "I'd like to know."

A bit baffled by this attitude of composure, Trowbridge hesitated, for it was not at all what he had expected to combat. If the Senator had flown into a passion, the cattleman would have responded with equal heat; now he was less sure of himself and his ground. It was barely possible, after all, that Tug Bailey had shot Jensen out of personal spite; or, at the worst, had been the tool of Moran alone. One could hardly associate the thought of murder with the very prosperous looking gentleman, who so calmly faced them and twirled his eyeglasses between his fingers.

"Why should that idea have occurred to you?" the Senator asked again. "So far as I am informed, Wade is also liable to arrest for complicity in the Jensen murder; in addition to which he has effected a jail delivery and burglarized my office. It seems to me, if he has been kidnaped as you say, that I am the last person to have any interest in his welfare, or his whereabouts. Why do you come to me?"

This was too much for Santry's self-restraint.

"What's the use of talkin' to him?" he demanded. "If he ain't done it himself, don't we know that Moran done it for him? To hell with talkin'!" He shook a gnarled fist at Rexhill, who paid no attention whatever to him, but deliberately looked in another direction.

"That is why we are here," said Trowbridge, when he had quieted Santry once more. "Because we have good reason to believe that, if these acts do not proceed from you, they do proceed from your agent, and you're responsible for what he does, if I know anything about law. This man Moran has carried things with a high hand in this community, but now he's come to the end of his rope, and he's going to be punished. That means that you'll get yours, too, if he's acted under your orders." The cattleman was getting into his stride now that the first moments of his embarrassment were passed. His voice rang with authority, which the Senator was quick to recognize, although he gave no evidence that he was impressed. "Has Moran been acting for you, that's what we want to know?"

"My dear fellow,"—Rexhill laughed rumblingly,—"if you'll only stop for an instant to think, you'll see how absurd this is."

"A frank answer to a frank question," Trowbridge persisted. "Has he been acting for you? Do you, at this moment, know what has become of Wade, or where he is?"

"That's the stuff!" growled Santry, whose temples were throbbing under the effort he put forth to hold himself within bounds.

"I do not!" the Senator said, bluntly. "And I'll say freely that I would not tell you if I did."

Santry's hands opened and shut convulsively. He was in the act of springing upon Rexhill when Trowbridge seized him.

"You're a liar!" he roared, struggling in his friend's grasp. "Let me at him. By the great horned toad, I'll make him tell!"

"Put that man out of this room!" Rexhill had arisen in all of his ponderous majesty, roused to wrath at last. His pudgy finger shook as he pointed to the door, and his fat face was congested. "I'm not here to be insulted by a jail-bird. Put him out!"

Trowbridge's eyes gleamed exultantly, although he still kept a tight hold on Santry, for this was the sort of thing he had expected to meet. He had not thought that Rexhill would confess complicity in the kidnaping this early in the game; but he had looked for an outburst of anger which would give him the chance he wanted to free his own mind of the hate that was in it. He had wanted the chance to make Rexhill feel that his hour of atonement was close at hand, and getting nearer every minute.

"Easy, now!" he admonished. "We're going, both of us, but we won't be put out. You've said just what I looked for you to say. You've denied knowledge of this thing. I think with Santry here that you're a liar, a God-forsaken liar." He drew closer to the Senator, who seemed about to burst with passion, and held him with a gaze his fury could not daunt. "May Heaven help you, Senator, when we're ready to prove all this against you. If you're in Crawling Water then, we'll ride you to hell on a rail."

"Now," Trowbridge said to Santry, when they were downstairs again, "you get out of town hot-foot. Ride to my place. Take this!" He scribbled a few lines on the back of an envelope. "Give it to my foreman. Tell him to meet me with the boys where the trail divides. We'll find Wade, if we have to trade our beds for lanterns and kill every horse in the valley."

The two men shook hands, and Santry's eyes were fired with a new hope. The old man was grateful for one thing, at least: the time for action had arrived. He had spent his youth on the plains in the days when every man was a law unto himself, and the years had not lessened his spirit.

"I'll be right after you, Bill," Trowbridge concluded. "I'm going first to break the news to Miss Purnell. She'd hear it anyway and be anxious. She'd better get it straight from me."

Lem Trowbridge had seen only one woman faint, but the recollection was indelibly impressed upon his mind. It had happened in his boyhood, at the ranch where he still lived, when a messenger had arrived with word of the death of the elder Trowbridge, whose horse had stepped into a prairie-dog hole and fallen with his rider. The picture of his mother's collapse he could never forget, or his own horrible thought that she, too, had passed away, leaving him parentless. For months afterwards he had awakened at night, crying out that she was dead.

The whole scene recurred to him when he told Dorothy of Wade's disappearance, and saw her face flush and then pale, as his mother's had done. The girl did not actually faint, for she was young and wonderfully strong, but she came so near to it that he was obliged to support her with his arm to keep her on her feet. That was cruel, too, for he loved her. But presently she recovered, and swept from his mind all thought of himself by her piteous appeal to him to go instantly in search of Wade.

"We'll find him, Dorothy, don't you worry," he declared, with an appearance of confidence he was far from feeling. "I came around to tell you myself because I wanted you to know that we are right on the job."

"But how can you find him in all those mountains, Lem? You don't even know which side of the range they've hidden him on."

He reminded her that he had been born in Crawling Water Valley, and that he knew every draw and canyon in the mountains; but in his heart he realized that to search all these places would take half a lifetime. He could only hope that chance, or good fortune, might lead them promptly to the spot they sought.

"Do you think that Senator Rexhill knows where Gordon is?" she asked. "Is he in this, too?"

"I don't know for sure," he answered. "I believe Moran is acting under Rexhill's orders, but I don't know how much Rexhill knows of the details. If I knew that, it would be fairly easy. I'd...." His strong hands gripped the back of a chair until his knuckles showed white under their tan. "I'd choke it out of him!"

"Oh, if there was only something I could do!" Dorothy wailed helplessly. "A woman never can do anything in a crisis but wait!" Her distress was so pitiable to witness that Trowbridge averted his gaze.

"We'll do all that can be done, Dorothy," he assured her. "Trust me for that. Besides—" A thought had just flashed into his head which might relieve her sense of helplessness. "Besides, we're going to need you here in town to keep us informed of what goes on."

"If I learn anything, how can I get word to you?" she asked, her face brightening somewhat. "You'll be up in the hills."

"I'll try to keep a man at the big pine all the time. If you find out anything send word to him."

"Oh, yes, I will, I will. That'll be something anyhow." Her eyes sparkling with tears, she gave him both her hands. "Good-by, Lem!"

"Good-by, Dorothy," he said solemnly, wringing her hands. "I know just how it is. We'll find him for you!"

CHAPTER XVI

Now that his brain was clearing he felt sure that his capture was the work of Moran, doubtless planned as a revenge for the events of their last meeting, although what shape this revenge was to take the cattleman could not guess. He feared that he would either be shot or left to starve in this cul-de-sac in the hills. The thought of all that he and his friends had suffered through Moran lashed the ranchman temporarily to fury; but that he soon controlled as well as he could, for he found its only result was to increase the pain in his head, without aiding to solve the problem of escape. The prospect of getting out of his prison seemed remote, for one glance at its precipitate walls had shown him that not even a mountain goat could scale them. Help, if it came at all, must come through Santry, who could be counted on to arouse the countryside. The thought of the state the old man must be in worried Wade; and he was too familiar with the vast number of small canyons and hidden pockets in the mountains to believe that his friends would soon find him. Before help could reach him, undoubtedly Moran would show his hand, in which for the present were all the trumps.

It was characteristic of the cattleman that, with the full realization of his danger, should come a great calm. He had too lively an imagination to be called a man of iron nerve, for that quality of courage is not so often a virtue as a lack of sensitiveness. He who is courageous because he knows no fear is not so brave by half as he who gauges the extent of his peril and rises superior to it. Wade's courage was of the latter sort, an ascendancy of the mind over the flesh. Whenever danger threatened him, his nerves responded to his need with the precision of the taut strings of a perfectly tuned fiddle under a master hand. He had been more nervous, many a time, over the thought of some one of his men riding a dangerous horse or turning a stampede, than he was now that his own life seemed threatened.

Shrugging his broad shoulders, he rolled and smoked a cigarette. The slight exhilaration of the smoke, acting on his weakened condition, together with the slight dizziness still remaining from the blow on his head, was far from conducing to clear thinking, but he forced himself to careful thought. He was less concerned about himself than he was about Santry and Dorothy; particularly Dorothy, for he had now come to appreciate how closely she had come into his life. Her sympathy had been very sweet to him, but he told himself that he would be sorry to have her worry about him now, when there was so little chance of their seeing each other again. He had no great hope of rescue. He expected to die, either by violence or by the slower process of starvation, but in either case he meant to meet his fate like a man.

Of Helen Rexhill, he thought now with a sense of distaste. It was altogether unlikely that she had been privy to her father's depredations, but certainly she countenanced them by her presence in Crawling Water, and she had shown up so poorly in contrast with Dorothy Purnell that Wade could not recall his former tenderness for his early sweetheart. Even if great good fortune should enable him to escape from his prison, the interests of the Rexhill family were too far removed from his own to be ever again bridged by the tie of love, or even of good-feeling. He could not blame the daughter for the misdeeds of her parent, but the old sentiment could never be revived. It was not for Helen that the instinct of self-preservation stirred within him, nor was it in her eyes that he would look for the light of joy over his rescue, if rescue should come.

He smoked several cigarettes, until the waning of his supply of tobacco warned him to economize against future cravings. Realizing that even if his friends were within a stone's throw of him they would not be likely to find him unless he gave some sign of his presence, he got to his feet and, making a trumpet out of his hands, shouted loudly. He repeated this a dozen times, or more, and was about to sink back upon the sand when he heard footsteps approaching on the ground overhead. He had little idea that a friend was responding to his call, but being unarmed he could do no more than crouch against the wall of the cliff while he scanned the opening above him.

Presently there appeared in the opening the head of a Texan, Goat Neale, whom Wade recognized as a member of Moran's crew and a man of some note as a gunfighter.

"How," drawled the Texan, by way of greeting. "Feelin' pretty good?" When the ranchman did not reply, his inquisitor seemed amused. "A funny thing like this here always makes me laff," he remarked. "It sure does me a heap of good to see you all corraled like a fly in a bottle. Mebbe you'd take satisfaction in knowin' that it was me brung you down out yonder in the timber. I was sure mighty glad to take a wallop at you, after the way you all done us up that night at the ranch."

"So I'm indebted to you for this, eh?" Wade spoke casually, as though the matter were a trifling thing. He was wondering if he could bribe Neale to set him free. Unfortunately he had no cash about him, and he concluded that the Texan would not think promises worth while under the circumstances.

"Sure. I reckon you'd like to see the boss? Well, he's comin' right on over. Just now he's eatin' a mess o' bacon and beans and cawfee, over to the camp. My Gawd, that's good cawfee, too. Like to have some, eh?" But Wade refused to play Tantalus to the lure of this temptation and kept silent. "Here he comes now."

"Is he all right?" Wade heard Moran ask, as Neale backed away from the rim of the hole.

"Yep," the Texan answered.

The ranchman instinctively braced himself to meet whatever might befall. It was quite possible, he knew, that Moran had spared him in the timber-belt to torture him here; he did not know whether to expect a bullet or a tongue lashing, but he was resolved to meet his fate courageously and, as far as was humanly possible, stoically. To his surprise, the agent's tone did not reveal a great amount of venom.

"Hello, Wade!" he greeted, as he looked down on his prisoner. "Find your quarters pretty comfortable, eh? It's been a bit of a shock to you, no doubt, but then shocks seem to be in order in Crawling Water Valley just now."

"Moran, I've lived in this country a good many years." Wade spoke with a suavity which would have indicated deadly peril to the other had the two been on anything like equal terms. "I've seen a good many blackguards come and go in that time, but the worst of them was redeemed by more of the spark of manhood than there seems to be in you."

"Is that so?" Moran's face darkened in swift anger, but he restrained himself. "Well, we'll pass up the pleasantries until after our business is done. You and I've got a few old scores to settle and you won't find me backward when the times comes, my boy. It isn't time yet, although maybe the time isn't so very far away. Now, see here." He leaned over the edge of the cliff to display a folded paper and a fountain-pen. "I have here a quit-claim deed to your ranch, fully made out and legally witnessed, needing only your signature to make it valid. Will you sign it?"

Wade started in spite of himself. This idea was so preposterous that it had never occurred to him as the real motive for his capture. He could scarcely believe that so good a lawyer as Senator Rexhill could be blind to the fact that such a paper, secured under duress, would have no validity under the law. He looked up at the agent in amazement.

"I know what you're thinking, of course," Moran went on, with an evil smile. "We're no fools. I've got here, besides the deed, a check made out to you for ten thousand dollars." He held it up. "You'll remember that we made you that offer once before. You turned it down then, but maybe you'll change your mind now. After you indorse the check I'll deposit it to your credit in the local bank."

The cattleman's face fell as he caught the drift of this complication. That ten thousand dollars represented only a small part of the value of his property was true, but many another man had sold property for less than it was worth. If a perfectly good check for ten thousand dollars, bearing his indorsement, were deposited to the credit of his banking account, the fact would go far to offset any charge of duress that he might later bring. To suppose that he had undervalued his holdings would be no more unreasonable than to suppose that a man of Senator Rexhill's prominence would stoop to physical coercion of an adversary. The question would merely be one of personal probity, with the presumption on the Senator's side.

"Once we get a title to the land, a handle to fight with, we sha'n't care what you try to do," Moran explained further. "We can afford to laugh at you." That seemed to Wade to be true. "If you accept my offer now, I will set you free as soon as this check is in the bank, and the settlement of our personal scores can go over to another time. I assure you that I am just as anxious to get at you as you are to get at me, but I've always made it a rule never to mix pleasure and business. You'll have a fair start to get away. On the other hand, if you refuse, you'll be left here without food. Once each day I'll visit you; at other times you'll be left alone, except when Goat may care to entertain himself by baiting you. You'll be perfectly safe here, guard or no guard, believe me."

Moran chuckled ominously, his thoughts divided between professional pride, excited by the thought of successfully completing the work he had come to Crawling Water to do, and exultation at the prospect that his sufferings while gagged the previous night might be atoned for a thousand times if Wade should refuse to sign the quit-claim.

"In plain speech," said Wade, pale but calm, "you propose to starve me to death."

"Exactly," was the cheerful assurance. "If I were you, I'd think a bit before answering."

Because the cattleman was in the fullest flush of physical vigor, the lust of life was strong in him. Never doubting that Moran meant what he said, Wade was on the point of compliance, thinking to assume the burden later on, of a struggle with Rexhill to regain his ranch. His manhood rebelled at the idea of coercion, but, dead, he could certainly not defend himself; it seemed to him better that he should live to carry on the fight. He would most likely have yielded but for the taunt of cowardice which had already been noised about Crawling Water. True, the charge had sprung from those who liked him least, but it had stung him. He was no coward, and he would not feed such a report now by yielding to Moran. Whatever the outcome of a later fight might be, the fact that he had knuckled under to the agent could never be lived down. Such success as he had won had been achieved by playing a man's part in man's world.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Moran," he said, finally. "Give me a hand out of this hole, or come down here yourself. Throw aside your gun, but keep your knife. I'll allow you that advantage. Meet me face to face! Damn you, be a man! Anything that you can gain by my signature, you can gain by my death. Get the best of me, if you can, in a man's fight. Pah!" He spat contemptuously. "You're a coward, Moran, a white-livered coward! You don't dare fight with me on anything like equal terms. I'll get out of here somehow, and when I do—by Heaven, I'll corner you, and I'll make you fight."

"Get out? How?" Moran laughed the idea to scorn. "Your friends can look for you from now till snowfall. They'll never find even your bones. Rot there, if you choose. Why should I take a chance on you when I've got you where I want you? You ought to die. You know too much."

"Yes," Wade retorted grimly. "I know too much. I know enough to hang you, you murderer. Who killed Oscar Jensen? Answer that! You did it, or you had it done, and then you tried to put it on Santry and me, and I'm not the only one who knows it. This country's too small to hold you, Moran. Your fate is settled already, whatever may happen to me."

"Still, I seem to be holding four aces now," Moran grinned back at him. "And the cards are stacked."

Left alone, Wade rolled himself a cigarette from his scant hoard of tobacco. Already he was hungry, for deep shadows in his prison marked the approach of night, and he had the appetite of a healthy man. The knowledge that he was to be denied food made him feel the hungrier, until he resolutely put the thought of eating out of his mind. The water, trickling down the face of the rock, was a God-send, though, and he drank frequently from the little stream.

By habit a heavy smoker, he viewed with dismay the inroads which he had already made on his store of tobacco for that deprivation he felt would be the most real of any that he could suffer. He tried to take shorter puffs upon his cigarette, and between them shielded the fire with his hand, so that the air-draughts in the fissure might not cheat him of any of the smoke. He figured that he had scarcely enough tobacco left for a dozen cigarettes, which was less than his usual daily allowance.

On searching his pockets, in the hope of finding a second sack of Durham, he chanced upon his clasp-knife, and viewed the find with joy. The thought of using it as a weapon did not impress him, for his captors would keep out of reach of such a toy, but he concluded that he might possibly use it to carve some sort of foothold in the rock. The idea of cutting the granite was out of the question, but there might be strata of softer stone which he could dig into. It was a forlorn hope, in a forlorn cause, and it proved futile. At his first effort the knife's single blade snapped off short, and he threw the useless handle away.

Darkness fell some time before the cool night air penetrated the fissure; when it did so the cold seemed likely to be added to his other physical discomforts. In the higher altitudes the nights were distinctly chilly even in mid-summer, and he had on only a light outing shirt, above his waist. As the hour grew late, the cold increased in severity until Wade was forced to walk up and down his narrow prison in the effort to keep warm. He had just turned to retrace his steps, on one such occasion, when his ears caught the soft pat-pat of a footfall on the ground above. He instantly became motionless and tensely alert, wondering which of his enemies was so stealthily returning, and for what reason.

He thought it not unlikely that Moran had altered his purpose and come back to shoot him while he slept. Brave though he was, the idea of being shot down in such a manner made his flesh crawl. Stooping, he picked up a fragment of rock; although he realized the futility of the weapon, it was all he had. Certainly, whoever approached was moving with the utmost stealth, which argued an attack of some kind. Drawing back the hand that held the stone, the cattleman shrank into a corner of the fissure and waited. Against the starlit sky, he had an excellent view of the opening above him, and possibly by a lucky throw the stone would serve against one assailant, at least.

The pat-pat-pat drew nearer and stopped, at last, on the extreme edge of the hole. A low, long-drawn sniff showed that this was no human enemy. If the sound had been louder, Wade would have guessed that it was made by a bear; but as it was he guessed the prowler to be a mountain-lion. He had little fear of such a beast; most of them were notorious cowards unless cornered, and when presently a pair of glowing eyes peered down into the fissure, he hurled the stone at them with all his might. His aim was evidently true, for with a snarl of pain the animal drew back.

But just as amongst the most pacific human races there are some brave spirits, so amongst the American lions there are a few which possess all the courage of their jungle brothers. Actuated by overweening curiosity, or else by a thirst for blood, the big cat returned again and again to the edge of the hole. After his first throw Wade was unable to hit the beast with a stone, although his efforts had the temporary effect of frightening it. Gradually, however, it grew bolder, and was restrained from springing upon him only, as it seemed, by some sixth sense which warned it of the impossibility of getting out of the fissure after once getting in. Baffled and furious, the lion sniffed and prowled about the rim of the hole until the ranchman began to think it would surely leap upon him.

He picked up his broken pocket-knife and waited for this to happen. The shattered blade would be of little use, but it might prove better than his bare hands if he had to defend himself against the brute's teeth and claws.

CHAPTER XVII

"Bill Santry found their trail," Dorothy said, with a gesture so tragic that it wrung her mother's heart strings. "He followed it as far as he could, then lost it." In any other case she would have tried to keep the bad news from her mother, because of her nerves, but just now the girl was too distraught to think of any one but the man she loved. "Oh, if I could only do something myself," she burst out. "It's staying here, helpless, that is killing me. I wish I'd gone with Lem up into the mountains. I would have if he hadn't said I might better stay in town. But how can I help? There's nothing to do here."

"The idea!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed. "They'll be out all night. How could you have gone with them? I don't believe Gordon has been kidnaped at all. It's a false alarm, I tell you. Who could have done such a thing?"

"Who?" The question broke Dorothy's patience. "Who's done everything that's abominable and contemptible lately here in Crawling Water? That Moran did it, of course, with Senator Rexhill behind him. Oh!"

"Nonsense!" said her mother, indignantly.

"Lem Trowbridge thinks so. Nearly everybody does."

"Then he hasn't as good sense as I thought he had." Mrs. Purnell arose and moved toward the kitchen. "You come on and help me make some waffles for supper. Perhaps that will take such foolishness out of your head. The idea of a Senator of the United States going about kidnaping people."

Dorothy obeyed her mother's wish, but not very ably. Her face was flushed and her eyes hot; ordinarily she was a splendid housekeeper and a dutiful daughter, but there are limits to human endurance. She mixed the batter so clumsily and with such prodigal waste that her mother had to stop her, and she was about to put salt into the sugar bowl when Mrs. Purnell snatched it out of her hands. "Go into the dining-room and sit down, Dorothy," she exclaimed. "You're beside yourself." It is frequently the way with people, who are getting on in years and are sick, to charge their own shortcomings on any one who may be near. Mrs. Purnell was greatly worried.

"What's the matter now?" she demanded, when Dorothy left her supper untasted on her plate.

"I was thinking."

"Well, can't you tell a body what you're thinking about? What are you sitting there that way for?"

"I was wondering," said Dorothy in despair, "if Helen Rexhill knows where Gordon is."

Mrs. Purnell snorted in disdain.

"Land's sakes, child, what put that into your head? Drink your tea. It'll do you good."

"Why shouldn't she know, if her father does?" The girl pushed her tea-cup farther away from her. "She wouldn't have come all the way out here with him—he wouldn't have brought her with him—if they weren't working together. She must know. But I don't see why...."

"Dorothy Purnell, I declare to goodness, I believe you're going crazy." Mrs. Purnell dropped her fork. "All this about Gordon is bad enough without my being worried so...."

"I'd even give him up to her, if she'd tell me that." Dorothy's voice was unsteady, and she seemed to be talking to herself rather than to her mother. "I know she thinks I've come between her and Gordon, but I haven't meant to. He's just seemed to like me better; that's all. But I'd do anything to save him from Moran."

"I should say that you might better wait until he asks you, before you talk of giving him up to somebody." Mrs. Purnell spoke with the primness that was to be expected, but her daughter made no reply. She had never mentioned the night in Moran's office, and her mother knew nothing of Wade's kiss. But to the girl it had meant more than any declaration in words. She had kept her lips inviolate until that moment, and when his kiss had fallen upon them it had fallen upon virgin soil, from out of which had bloomed a white flower of passion. Before then she had looked upon Wade as a warm friend, but since that night he had appeared to her in another guise; that of a lover, who has come into his own. She had met him then, a girl, and had left him a woman, and she felt that what he had established as a fact in the one rare moment of his kiss, belonged to him and her. It seemed so wholly theirs that she had not been able to bring herself to discuss it with her mother. She had won it fairly, and she treasured it. The thought of giving him up to Helen Rexhill, of promising her never to see Wade again, was overwhelming, and was to be considered only as a last resource, but there was no suffering that she would not undertake for his sake.

Mrs. Purnell was as keenly alive as ever to the hope that the young ranch owner might some day incline toward her little girl, but she was sensitive also to the impression which the Rexhills had made upon her. Her life with Mr. Purnell had not brought her many luxuries, and perhaps she over-valued their importance. She thought Miss Rexhill a most imposing young woman and she believed in the impeccability of the well-to-do. Her heart was still warmed by the memory of the courtesy with which she had been treated by the Senator's daughter, and was not without the gratification of feeling that it had been a tribute to her own worth. She had scolded Dorothy afterward for her frank speech to Miss Rexhill at the hotel, and she felt that further slurs on her were uncalled for.

"I'm sure that Miss Rexhill treated us as a lady should," she said tartly. "She acted more like one than you did, if I do have to say it. She was as kind and sweet as could be. She's got a tender heart. I could see that when she up and gave me that blotter, just because I remarked that it reminded me of your childhood."

"Oh, that old blotter!" Dorothy exclaimed petulantly. "What did it amount to? You talk as though it were something worth having." She was so seldom in a pet that her mother now strove to make allowance for her.

"I'm not saying that it's of any value, Dorothy, except to me; but it was kind of her to seem to understand why I wanted it."

"It wasn't kind of her. She just did it to get rid of us, because we bored her. Oh, mother, you're daffy about the Rexhills, why not admit it and be done with it? You think they're perfect, but I tell you they're not—they're not! They've been behind all our troubles here. They've...." Her voice broke under the stress of her emotion and she rose to her feet.

"Dorothy, if you have no self-respect, at least have some...."

"I won't have that blotter in the house." The strain was proving more than the girl's nerves could stand. "I won't hear about it any longer. I'm going to—to tear it up!"

"Dorothy!"

For all the good that Mrs. Purnell's tone of authority did, it might as well have fallen upon the wind. She hastily followed her daughter, who had rushed from the room, and overtook her just in time to prevent her from destroying the little picture. Her own strength could not have sufficed to deter the girl in her purpose, if the latter had not realized in her heart the shameful way in which she was treating her mother.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, child? Look in that glass at your face! No wonder you don't think you look like the sweet child in the picture. You don't look like her now, nor act like her. That was why I wanted the blotter, to remind me of the way you used to look."

"I'm sorry, mother."

Blushing deeply as she recovered her self-control, Dorothy stole a glance at her reflection in the looking-glass of the bureau, before which she stood, and shyly contrasted her angry expression of countenance with the sweet one of the child on the blotter. Suddenly she started, and leaned toward the mirror, staring at something she saw there. The blood seemed driven from the surface of her skin; her lips were parted; her eyes dilated. She drew a swift breath of amazed exultation, and turned to her mother, who had viewed the sudden transformation with surprise.

"I'll be back soon, mother. I can't tell you what it is." Dorothy's voice rang with the suggestion of victory. "But I've discovered something, wonderful!"

Before Mrs. Purnell could adjust herself to this new mood, the girl was down the stairs and running toward the little barn. Slipping the bridle on her pony, she swung to its back without thought of a saddle, and turned the willing creature into the street. As she passed the house, she waved her hand to her mother, at the window, and vanished like a specter into the night.

"Oh, hurry, Gypsy, hurry!" she breathed into the pony's twitching ear.

Her way was not far, for she was going first to the hotel, but that other way, into the mountains after Gordon, would be a long journey, and no time could be wasted now. She was going to see Helen Rexhill, not as a suppliant bearing the olive branch, but as a champion to wage battle in behalf of the missing ranchman. She no longer thought of giving him up, and the knowledge that she might now keep the love which she had won for her very own made her reel on the pony's back from pure joy. She was his as he was hers, but the Rexhills were his enemies: she knew that positively now, and she meant to defeat them at their own game. If they would tell her where Gordon was, they might go free for all she cared; if they would not, she would give them over to the vengeance of Crawling Water, and she would not worry about what might happen to them. Meanwhile she thanked her lucky stars that Trowbridge had promised to keep a man at the big pine.

She tied her pony at the hitching-rack in front of the hotel and entered the office. Like most of the men in the town, the proprietor was her ardent admirer, but he had never seen her before in such radiant mood. He took his cigar from between his lips, and doffed his Stetson hat, which he wore indoors and out, with elaborate grace.

"Yes, Miss, Miss Rexhill's in, up in the parlor, I think. Would you like me to step up and let her know you're here?"

"No, thank you, I'll go right up myself," said Dorothy; her smile doubly charming because of its suggestion of triumph.

Miss Rexhill, entirely unaware of what was brewing for her, was embroidering by the flickering light of one of the big oil lamps, with her back to the doorway, and so did not immediately note Dorothy's presence in the room. Her face flushed with annoyance and she arose, when she recognized her visitor.

"You will please pardon me, but I do not care to receive you," she said primly.

This beginning, natural enough from Helen's standpoint, after what her father had told her in Moran's office, convinced Dorothy that she had read the writing on the blotter correctly. She held her ground, aggressively, between Miss Rexhill and the door.

"You must hear what I have to say to you," she declared quietly. "I have not come here to make a social call."

"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I do not wish to talk to you?" Helen lifted her brows and shrugged her shoulders. "Surely, it should be enough. Will you please stand aside so that I may go to my room?"

"No, I won't! You can't go until you've heard what I've got to say." Stung by the other woman's contemptuous tone, and realizing that the situation put her at a social disadvantage, Dorothy forced an aggressive tone into her voice, ugly to the ear.

"Very well!" Miss Rexhill shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and resumed her seat. "We must not engage in a vulgar row. Since I must listen to you, I must, but at least I need not talk to you, and I won't."

"You know that Gordon Wade has disappeared?" Helen made no response to this, and Dorothy bit her lip in anger. "I know that you know it," she continued. "I know that you know where he is. Perhaps, however, you don't know that his life is in danger. If you will tell me where he is, I can save him. Will you tell me?" The low throaty note of suffering in her voice brought a stiletto-like flash into the eyes of the other woman, but no response.

"Miss Rexhill," Dorothy went on, after a short pause. "You and Mr. Wade were friends once, if you are not now. Perhaps you don't realize just how serious the situation is here in this town, where nearly everybody likes him, and what would happen to you and your father, if I told what I know about you. I don't believe he would want it to happen, even after the way you've treated him. If you will only tell me...."

Helen turned abruptly in her chair, her face white with anger.

"I said that I would not talk to you," she burst out, "but your impertinence is so—so insufferable—so absolutely insufferable, that I must speak. You say you will tell people what you know about me. What do you know about me?" She arose to face Dorothy, with blazing eyes.

"I am sure that you know where Gordon is."

"You are sure of nothing of the kind. I do not know where Mr. Wade is, and why should I tell you if I did? Suppose I were to tell what I know about you? I don't believe the whole of it is known in Crawling Water yet. You—you must be insane."

"About me?" Dorothy's surprise was genuine. "There is nothing you could tell any one about me."

Miss Rexhill laughed scornfully, a low, withering laugh that brought a flush to the girl's cheeks, even though her conscience told her that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Dorothy stared at the other woman with wide-open, puzzled eyes, diverted for the moment from her own purpose.

"At least, you need not expect me to help you," Helen said acidulously. "I have my own feelings. I respected Mr. Wade at one time and valued his friendship. You have taken from me my respect for him, and you have taken from him his self-respect. Quite likely you had no respect for yourself, and so you had nothing to lose. But if you'll stop to consider, you may see how impertinent you are to appeal to me so brazenly."

"What are you talking about?" Dorothy's eyes, too, were blazing now, but more in championship of Wade than of herself. She still did not fully understand the drift of what Miss Rexhill had said.

"Really, you are almost amusing." Helen looked at her through half-closed lids. "You are quite freakish. I suppose you must be a moral degenerate, or something of the sort." She waited for the insult to sink in, but Dorothy was fairly dazed and bewildered. "Do you want me to call things by their true names?"

"Yes," answered Dorothy, "I do. Tell me what you are talking about."

"I don't mind, I'm sure. Plain speaking has never bothered me. It's the deed that's horrible, not the name. You were found in Mr. Moran's office with Mr. Wade, late at night, misbehaving yourself. Do you dare to come now to me and...."

"That is not true!" The denial came from Dorothy with an intensity that would have carried conviction to any person less infuriated than the woman who faced her. "Oh!" Dorothy raised her hands to her throat as though struggling for breath. "I never dreamed you meant that. It's a deliberate lie!"

In the grip of their emotions, neither of the girls had noticed the entrance of Senator Rexhill. Helen saw him first and dramatically pointed to him.

"There is my father. Ask him!"

"I do not need to ask him what I've done." Dorothy felt as though she would suffocate. "No one would believe that story of Gordon, whatever they might think of me."

"Ask me? Ask me what?" the Senator nervously demanded. He had in his pocket a telegram just received from Washington, stating that the cavalry would be sent from Fort Mackenzie only at the request of the Governor of Wyoming. The Governor was not at all likely to make such a request, and Rexhill was more worried than he had been before, in years. He could only hope that Tug Bailey would escape capture. "Who is this?" He put on his glasses, and deliberately looked Dorothy over. "Oh, it's the young woman whom Race found in his office."

"She has come here to plead for Gordon Wade—to demand that I tell her where he is now. I don't know, of course; none of us know; but I wouldn't tell her if I did." Helen spoke triumphantly.

"You had better leave us," Rexhill said brusquely to Dorothy. "You are not wanted here. Go home!"

While they were talking, Dorothy had looked from one to the other with the contempt which a good woman naturally feels when she is impugned. Now she crossed the room and confronted the Senator.

"Did you tell your daughter that I was caught in your office with Gordon Wade?" she demanded; and before her steady gaze Rexhill winced.

"You don't deny it, do you?" he blustered.

"I don't deny being there with him, and I won't deny anything else to such a man as you. I'm too proud to. For your own sake, however, you would have done better not to have tried to blacken me." She turned swiftly to his daughter. "Perhaps you don't know all that I supposed you did. We were in Moran's office—Mr. Wade and myself—because we felt sure that your father had some criminal purpose here in Crawling Water. We were right. We found papers showing the location of gold on Mr. Wade's ranch, which showed your father's reasons for trying to seize the land."

Helen laughed scornfully.

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

"No, of course not," her father growled. "Come on up to our rooms. Let her preach here until she is put out." He was on his way to the door when the vibrant command in Dorothy's voice halted him.

"Wait. You'd better listen to me, for it's the last chance you'll have. I have you absolutely at my mercy. I've caught you! You are trapped!" There was no doubting that the girl believed what she said, and the Senator's affairs were in a sufficiently precarious state to bid him pause.

"Nonsense!" He made his own tone as unconcerned as he could, but there was a look of haunting dread in his eyes.

"Senator Rexhill,"—Dorothy's voice was low, but there was a quality in it which thrilled her hearers,—"when my mother and I visited your daughter a few days ago, she gave my mother a blotter. There was a picture on it that reminded my mother of me as a child; that was why she wanted it. It has been on my mother's bureau ever since. I never noticed anything curious about it until this evening." She looked, with a quiet smile at Helen. "Probably you forgot that you had just blotted a letter with it."

Helen started and went pale, but not so pale as her father, who went so chalk-white that the wrinkles in his skin looked like make-up, against its pallor.

"I was holding that blotter before the looking-glass this evening," Dorothy continued, in the same low tone, "and I saw that the ink had transferred to the blotter a part of what you had written. I read it. It was this: 'Father knew Santry had not killed Jensen....'"

The Senator moistened his lips with his tongue and strove to chuckle, but the effort was a failure. Helen, however, appeared much relieved.

"I remember now," she said, "and I am well repaid for my moment of sentiment. I was writing to my mother and was telling her of a scene that had just taken place between Mr. Wade and my father. I did not write what you read; rather, it was not all that I wrote. I said—'Gordon thought that father knew Santry had not killed Jensen.'"

"Have you posted that letter?" her father asked, repressing as well as he could his show of eagerness.

"No. I thought better about sending it. I have it upstairs."

"If you hadn't it, of course you could write it again, in any shape you chose," Dorothy observed crisply, though she recognized, plainly enough, that the explanation was at least plausible.