Kitabı oku: «Louisiana Lou. A Western Story», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XIII
AT WALLACE’S RANCH

The efficient Sucatash reported back to Solange the details of De Launay’s escape, making them characteristically brief and colorful. Then, with the effective aid of MacKay, he set out to prepare for the expedition in search of the mine.

Neither Sucatash nor Dave actually had any real conviction that Solange would venture into the Esmeraldas at this time of year to look for a mine whose very existence they doubted as being legendary. Yet neither tried to dissuade her from the rash adventure – as yet. In this attitude they were each governed by like feelings. Both of them were curious and sentimental. Each secretly wondered what the slender, rather silent young woman looked like, and each was beginning to imagine that the veil hid some extreme loveliness. Each felt himself handicapped in the unwonted atmosphere of the town and each imagined that, once he got on his own preserves, he would show to much better advantage in her eyes.

Sucatash was quite confident that, once they got Solange at his father’s ranch, they would be able to persuade her to stay there for the winter. Dave also had about the same idea. Each reasoned that, in an indeterminate stay at the ranch, she would certainly, in time, show her countenance. Neither of them figured De Launay as anything but some assistant, more or less familiar with the West, whom she had engaged and who had been automatically eliminated by virtue of his latest escapade.

Solange, however, developed a disposition to arrange her own fate. She smiled politely when the young men gave awkward advice as to her costuming and equipment, but paid little heed to it. She allowed them to select the small portion of her camping outfit that they thought necessary at this stage, and to arrange for a car to take it and them to Wallace’s ranch. They took their saddles in the car and sent their horses out by such chance riders as happened to be going that way.

The journey to Wallace’s ranch was uneventful except for a stop at the former Brandon ranch at Twin Forks, where Solange met the Basco proprietors, and gave her cow-puncher henchmen further cause for wonder by conversing fluently with them in a language which bore no resemblance to any they had ever heard before. They noted an unusual deference which the shy mountaineers extended toward her.

There was a pause of some time while Solange visited the almost obliterated mound marking the grave of her father. But she did not pray over it or manifest any great emotion. She simply stood there for some time, lost in thought, or else mentally renewing her vow of vengeance on his murderer. Then, after discovering that the sheepmen knew nothing of consequence concerning these long-past events, she came quietly back to the car and they resumed the journey.

Finally they passed a camp fire set back from the road at some distance and the cow-punchers pointed out the figure of Banker crouched above it, apparently oblivious of them.

“What you all reckon that old horned toad is a-doin’ here?” queried Dave, from the front seat. “Dry camp, and him only three mile from the house and not more’n five from the Spring.”

“Dunno,” replied Sucatash. “Him bein’ a prospector, that a way, most likely he ain’t got the necessary sense to camp where a white man naturally would bog down.”

“But any one would know enough to camp near water,” said Solange, surprised.

“Yes’m,” agreed Sucatash, solemnly. “Any one would! But them prospectors ain’t human, that a way. They lives in the deserts so much they gets kind of wild and flighty, ma’am. Water is so scarce that they gets to regardin’ it as somethin’ onnatural and dangerous. More’n enough of it to give ’em a drink or two and water the Jennies acts on ’em all same like it does on a hydrophoby skunk. They foams at the mouth and goes mad.”

“With hydrophobia?” exclaimed the unsophisticated Solange.

“Yes’m,” said Sucatash. “Especially if it’s deep enough to cover their feet. Yuh see, ma’am, they gets in mortal terror that, if they nears enough water to wet ’em all over, some one will rack in and just forcibly afflict ’em with a bath – which ’ud sure drive one of ’em plumb loco.”

“I knows one o’ them desert rats,” said Dave, reminiscently, “what boasts a plenty about the health he enjoys. Which he sure allows he’s lived to a ripe old age – and he was ripe, all right. This here venerableness, he declares a whole lot, is solely and absolutely due to the ondisputable fact that he ain’t never bathed in forty-two years. And we proves him right, at that.”

“What!” cried the horrified Solange. “That his health was due to his uncleanliness? But that is absurd!”

“Which it would seem so, ma’am, but there ain’t no gettin’ round the proof. We all doubts it, just like you do. So we ups and hog ties the old natural, picks him up with a pair of tongs and dips him in the crick. Which he simply lets out one bloodcurdlin’ yell of despair and passes out immediate.”

“Mon Dieu!” said Solange, fervently. “Quels farceurs!”

“Yes’m,” they agreed, politely.

Then Solange laughed and they broke into sympathetic grins, even the solemn Sucatash showing his teeth in enjoyment as he heard her tinkling mirth with its bell-like note.

Then they forgot the squatting figure by its camp fire and drove on to the ranch.

This turned out to be a straggling adobe house, shaded by cottonwoods and built around three sides of a square. It was roomy, cool, and comfortable, with a picturesqueness all its own. To Solange, it was inviting and homelike, much more so than the rather cold luxury of hotels and Pullman staterooms. And this feeling of homeliness was enhanced when she was smilingly and cordially welcomed by a big, gray-bearded, bronzed man and a white-haired, motherly woman, the parents of young Sucatash.

The self-contained, self-reliant young woman almost broke down when Mrs. Wallace took her in charge and hurried her to her room. They seemed to know all about her and to take her arrival as an ordinary occurrence and a very welcome one. Sucatash, of course, was responsible for their knowledge, having telephoned them before they had started.

Before Solange reappeared ready for supper, Sucatash and Dave had explained all that they knew of the affair to Wallace. He was much interested but very dubious about it all.

“Of course, she’ll not be going into the mountains at this time o’ year,” he declared. “It ain’t more than a week before the snow’s bound to fly, and the Esmeraldas ain’t no place for girls in the winter time. I reckon that feller you-all helped get out o’ jail and that I planted hosses for won’t more than make it across the range before the road’s closed. I hope it wasn’t nothin’ serious he was in for, son.”

“Nothin’ but too much hooch an’ rumplin’ up a couple of cops,” said his son, casually. “Not that I wouldn’t have helped so long as he was in fer anything less than murder. The mad’mo’selle wanted him out, yuh see.”

“S’pose she naturally felt responsible fer him, that a way,” agreed Wallace. “Reckon she’s well rid o’ him, though. Don’t sound like the sort o’ man yuh’d want a young girl travelin round with. What was he like?”

“Tall, good-lookin’, foreign-appearin’ hombre. Talked pretty good range language though, and he sure could fork a hoss. Seemed to have a gnawin’ ambition to coil around all the bootleg liquor there is, though. Outside o’ that, he was all right.”

“De Launay? French name, I reckon.”

“Yeah, I reckon he’d been a soldier in the French army. Got the idea, somehow.”

“Well, he’s gone – and I reckon it’s as well. He won’t be botherin’ the little lady no more. What does she wear a veil for? Been marked any?”

Sucatash was troubled. “Don’t know, pop. Never seen her face. Ought to be a sure-enough chiquita, if it’s up to the rest of her. D’jever hear a purtier voice?”

The old man caught the note of enthusiasm. “Yuh better go slow, son,” he said, dryly. “I reckon she’s all right – but yuh don’t really know nothin’.”

“Shucks!” retorted his son, calmly. “I don’t have to know nothin’. She can run an iron on me any time she wants to. I’m lassoed, thrown an’ tied, a’ready.”

“Which yuh finds me hornin’ in before she makes any selection, yuh mottled-topped son of a gun!” Dave warmly put in. “I let’s that lady from France conceal her face, her past and any crimes she may have committed, is committin’ or be goin’ to commit, and I hereby declares myself for her forty ways from the Jack, fer anything from matrimony to murder.”

“Shucks,” said the old man, “you-all are mighty young.”

“Pop,” declared the Wallace heir, solemnly, “this here French lady is clean strain and grades high. Me and Dave may be young, but we ain’t making no mistake about her. She has hired herself a couple of hands, I’m telling you.”

Solange appeared at this moment, coming in with Mrs. Wallace, who was smiling in an evident agreement with her son. Mr. Wallace, while inclined to reserve judgment, had all the chivalry of his kind and stepped forward to greet her. But he paused a little uncertainly as he noticed that she had removed her veil. For a moment he looked at her in some astonishment, her unusual coloring affecting him as it did all those who observed it for the first time. The first glance resulted in startlement and the feeling that there was something uncanny about her, but as the deep eyes met his own and the pretty mouth smiled at him from beneath the glinting pale halo of her hair, he drew his breath in a long sigh of appreciation and admiration. His wife, looking at him with some deprecation, as though fearing an adverse judgment, smiled as his evident conquest became apparent. Standing near him the two boys stared and stared, something like awe in their ingenuous faces.

“Ma’am,” said Wallace, in his courtly manner, “we’re sure proud to welcome you. Which there ain’t many flowers out hereaways, and if there was there wouldn’t be none to touch you. It sure beats me why you ever wear a veil at all.”

Solange laughed and blushed. “Merci, monsieur! But that is exquisite! Still, it is not all that flatter me in that way. There are many who stare and point and even some who make the sign of the evil eye when they see this impossible ensemble. And the women! Mon Dieu! They ask me continually what chemist I patronize for the purpose of bleaching my hair.”

“Cats!” said Mrs. Wallace, with a sniff.

CHAPTER XIV
READY FOR ACTION

The fact that Solange ate heartily and naturally perhaps went far to overcome the feeling of diffidence that had settled on the Wallace rancheria. Perhaps it was merely that she showed herself quite human and feminine and charmingly demure. At any rate, before the meal was over, the Wallaces and Dave had recovered much of their poise and the two young men were even making awkward attempts at flirtation, much to the amusement of the girl.

Mr. Wallace, himself, although retaining a slight feeling that there was something uncanny about her, felt it overshadowed by a conviction that it would never do to permit her to go into the hills as she intended to do. He finally expressed himself to that effect.

“This here mine you’re hunting for, mad’mo’selle,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ to hold out no hopes to you, but I’ll set Dave and my son to lookin’ for it and you just stay right here with ma and me and make yourself at home.”

Solange smiled and shook her head. She habitually kept her eyes lowered, and perhaps this was the reason that, when she raised them now and then, they caught the observer unawares, with the effect of holding him startled and fascinated.

“It is kind of you, monsieur,” she said. “But I cannot stay. I am pledged to make the hunt – not only for the mine but for the man who killed my father. That is not an errand that I can delegate.”

“I’m afraid there ain’t no chance to find the man that did that,” said Wallace, kindly. “There ain’t no one knows. It might have been Louisiana, but if it was, he’s been gone these nineteen years and you’ll never find him.”

Solange smiled a little sadly and grimly. “We Basques are queer people,” she said. “We are very old. Perhaps that is why we feel things that others do not feel. It is not like the second sight I have heard that some possess. Yet it is in me here.” She laid her hand on her breast. “I feel that I will find that man – and the mine, but not so strongly. It is what you call a – a hunch, is it not?”

Wallace shook his head dubiously, but Solange had raised her eyes and as long as he could see them he felt unable to question anything she said.

“And it is said that a murderer always returns, sooner or later, to the scene of his crime, monsieur. I will be there when he comes back.”

“But,” said Mrs. Wallace, gently, “it is not necessary for you to go yourself. Indeed, you can’t do it, my dear!”

“Why not, madame?”

“Why – why – But, mad’mo’selle, you must realize that a young girl like you can’t wander these mountains alone – or with a set of young scamps like these boys. They’re good boys, and they wouldn’t hurt you, but people would talk.”

Solange only shrugged her shoulders. “Talk! Madame, I am not afraid of talk.”

“But, my dear, you are too lovely – too – You must understand that you can’t do it.”

“It’d sure be dangerous,” said Wallace, emphatically. “We couldn’t allow it, nohow. Even my son here – I wouldn’t let you go with him, and he’s a good boy as they go. And there’s others you might meet in the hills.”

Solange nodded. “I understand, monsieur. But I am not afraid. Besides, am I not to meet my husband on this Shoestring Cañon where we must first go?”

Simultaneously they turned on her. “Your husband!” It was a cry of astonishment from the older people and one of mingled surprise and shock from the boys. Solange smiled and nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “Monsieur de Launay, whom you rescued from the jail. He is my husband and it is all quite proper.”

“It ain’t proper nohow,” muttered Sucatash. “That bum is her husband, Dave!”

“I don’t get this, quite,” said Wallace.

Then Solange explained, telling them of the strange bargain she had made with De Launay and something of his history. The effect of the story was to leave them more doubtful than ever, but when Wallace tried to point out that she would be taking a very long chance to trust herself to a man of De Launay’s character and reputation, she only spread her hands and laughed, declaring that she had no fear of him. He had been a soldier and a gentleman, whatever he was now.

Wallace gave it up, but he had a remedy for the situation, at least in part.

“Son,” he said, abruptly, “you and Dave are hired. You-all are goin’ to trail along with this lady and see that she comes out all right. If she’s with her husband, there ain’t no cause for scandal. But if this De Launay feller gets anyways gay, you-all just puts his light out. You hear me!”

“You’re shoutin’, pop. Which we already signs on with mad’mo’selle. We hunts mines, murderers, or horned toads for her if she says so.”

Solange laughed, and there was affection in her mirth.

“That is splendid, messieurs. I cannot thank you.”

“You don’t need to,” growled Dave. “All we asks is a chance to slay this here husband of yours. Which we-all admires to see you a widow.”

After that Solange set herself to question Wallace regarding her father’s death. But he could tell her little she did not know.

“We never knows who killed him,” he said, after telling how Pierre d’Albret had been found, dying in his wagon, with a sack of marvelously rich ore behind him. “There was some says it was Louisiana, and a coroner’s jury over to Maryville brings in a verdict that a way. But I don’t know. Louisiana was wild and reckless and he could sure fan a gun, but he never struck me as bein’ a killer. Likewise, I never knows him to carry a rifle, and Brandon says he didn’t have one when he went out past his ranch. Course, he might have got hold of Pete’s gun and used that, but if he did how come that Pete don’t know who kills him?

“The main evidence against Louisiana lays with old Jim Banker, the prospector. He comes rackin’ in about a week later and says he sees Louisiana headin’ into Shoestring Cañon about the time Pete was shot. But the trailers didn’t find his hoss tracks. There was tracks left by Pete’s team and some burro sign, but there wasn’t no recent hoss tracks outside o’ that.”

“You say Jim Banker says he saw him?” demanded Sucatash.

“Yes.”

“Huh! That’s funny. Jim allows, down in Sulphur Falls, that he don’t know nothin’ about it. Says he was south of the range, out on the desert at the time.”

“Reckon he’s forgot,” said Wallace. “Anyway, if it was Louisiana, he’s gone and I reckon he won’t come back.”

“I think it could not have been any one else,” said Solange, thoughtfully. “What kind of man was this – this Louisiana?”

“Tall, good-lookin’ young chap, slim and quick as a rattler. He’d fool you on looks. Came from Louisiana, and gets his name from that and from a sort of coon song he was always singin’. Something about ‘My Louisiana – Louisiana Lou!’ Don’t remember his right name except that it was something like Delaney. Lew Delaney, I think.”

“He was a dangerous man, you say?”

“Well – he was sure dangerous. I’ve seen some could shake the loads out of a six-gun pretty fast and straight, but I never saw the beat of this feller. Them things gets exaggerated after a time, but if half of what they tell of this fellow was true, he was about the boss of the herd with a small gun.

“Still, he never shoots any one until he mixes with Snake Murphy and that was Snake’s fault. He was on the run with some of Snake’s friends after him when this happens. That’s how come he was down here.”

In the morning Solange appeared, dressed for the range. The two young men, who had been smitten by her previously, when she had been clad in the sort of garments they had seen on the dainty town girls, were doubly so when they saw her now. Slim and delicate, she wore breeches and coat of fair, soft leather and a Stetson, set over a vivid silk handkerchief arranged around her hair like a bandeau. The costume was eminently practical, as they saw at once, but it was also picturesquely feminine and dainty. It had the effect of raising her even higher above ordinary mortals. If it had been any other who wore it they would have contemptuously set her down as a moving-picture heroine and laughed behind her back. But Solange set off the costume and it set her off. Besides, it was not new, and had evidently been subjected to severe service.

CHAPTER XV
THE SHERIFF FINDS A CLEW

“Miss Pettis,” Captain Wilding remarked to his office attendant, a day or two after he had been summoned to meet Solange and had heard her rather remarkable story, “I’ll have to be going to Maryville for a day or two on this D’Albret case. I don’t believe there will be anything to discover regarding the mine and the man who killed her father, but, in case we do run into anything, I’d like to be fortified with whatever recollection you may have of the affair.”

“I don’t know a thing except what I told the dame,” said Marian, rather sullenly. “This guy Louisiana bumps the old man off after he leaves our place. Pete was comin’ in and was goin’ to take granddad in with him on the mine, but he can’t even tell where it was except that it was somewhere along the way he had come. You got to remember that I was just a kid and I don’t rightly remember anything about it except that this Louisiana was some little baby doll, himself. His looks were sure deceiving.”

“Well, how old was he at this time?”

“Oh, pretty young, I guess. Not much more than a kid. Say that French dame has a crust, hasn’t she, comin’ in here after all these years, swellin’ round with her face covered as if she’s afraid her complexion wouldn’t stand the sun, and expectin’ to run onto that mine, which, if she did find it would be as much mine as it is hers. And who’s this Delonny guy she’s bringin’ with her? Looks to me like a bolshevik anarchist or a panhandler.”

“Humph!” said Wilding, musingly. “He’s nothing like that. Fact is, she’s got a gold mine right there, and she wants to divorce it. Now, you’re sure Louisiana did this and that he left the country? Ever hear what became of him?”

“Nary a word,” said the girl, indifferently. “I reckon everybody has forgotten him around here except Snake Murphy, who works for Johnny the Greek. Snake used to know this guy, and it was for shootin’ him that Louisiana was run out of the country. Fact is, I’ve heard most of what I know from Snake.”

“I’d better interview him, I suppose,” said Wilding.

“If you can get any info out of him as to where that mine is you ought to tell me as quick as that French dame,” said Marian. “Believe me, I’m needing gold mines a lot more than she does. She ain’t so hard up that she can’t go chasing around the country and livin’ at swell hotels and hiring lawyers and things while I got to work for what I get. Anyway, half of that mine belongs to me.”

“The mine belongs to whoever finds it,” said Wilding. “It was never filed on, and any claim D’Albret might have had was lost at his death. In any event, I imagine that it has been so long ago that the chance of locating it now is practically nonexistent.”

“Me, too,” said Marian. “Unless – ” and she paused.

“Unless what?”

“Whatever brings this dame clear over from France to look for a mine after twenty years? D’you reckon that any one in their sober senses would squander money on a thing like that if they didn’t have some inside info as to where to look? Seems to me this Frog lady must have got some tip that we haven’t had.”

“Perhaps she has,” said Wilding. “In fact, she would hardly come here, as you say, with nothing definite to go on. But I’m not interested in the mine. What I want to know is where this Louisiana went after he left here.”

“Maybe Snake Murphy knows,” said Marian.

Wilding was inclined to agree with her. At least no other source of information appeared to offer any better prospects, so with some distaste he sought out Murphy at the pool room. He began by tactfully remarking about the changes from the old times, to which Murphy agreed.

“You’ve lived here since before the Falls was built, haven’t you, Murphy?” asked Wilding, after Snake had expressed some contempt for new times and new ways.

“Me!” said Snake, boastfully. “Why, when I come here there wasn’t anything here but sunshine and jack rabbits. I was the town of Sulphur Falls. I run a ferry and a road house down here when there wasn’t another place within five miles in any direction.”

“You knew the old-timers, then?”

“Nobody knew them any better. They all had to stop at my place whenever they were crossin’ the river. There wasn’t no ford.”

Wilding leaned over and grew confidential.

“Snake,” he said, in a low tone, “I’ve heard that you know something about this old-time gunman, Louisiana, and the killing of French Pete back about the first of the century. Is there anything in that?”

Snake eyed him coolly and appraisingly before he answered.

“There seems to be a lot of interest cropping up in this Louisiana and French Pete all of a sudden,” he remarked. “What’s the big idea?”

“I’m looking for Louisiana,” said Wilding.

“And not fer French Pete’s mine?”

“No interest at all in the mine,” Wilding assured him. “I’ve got an idea that Louisiana could be convicted of that murder if we could lay hands on him.”

“Well, you’re welcome to go to it if you want,” said Snake, dryly. He held up his stiffened right wrist and eyed it cynically. “But, personally, if it was me and I knowed that Louisiana was still kickin’, I’d indulge in considerable reflection before I went squanderin’ around lookin’ to lay anything on him. This here Louisiana, I’m free to state, wasn’t no hombre to aggravate carelessly. I found that out.”

“How?” Wilding asked.

“Oh, it was my own fault, I’ll admit at this day. There was a lady used to frequent my place who wasn’t any better than she should be. She took a grudge against Louisiana and, bein’ right fond of her at the time, I was foolish enough to horn in on the ruction. I’ll say this for Louisiana: he could just as well have beefed me complete instead of just shootin’ the derringer out of my fist the way he done. Takin’ it all together, I’d say he was plumb considerate.”

“He was a bad man, then?”

“Why, no, I wouldn’t say he was. He was a rattlesnake with a six-shooter, but, takin’ it altogether, he never run wild with it. Not until he beefs French Pete – that is, if he did down him. As for me, I never knew anything about that except what I was told because I was nursin’ a busted wrist about that time. All I know was that the boys that hung around here was after him for gettin’ me and that he headed out south, stoppin’ at Twin Forks and then goin’ on south toward the mountains. Nobody ever saw him again, and from that day to this he ain’t never been heard of.”

“Looks like he had some reason better than shooting you up to keep going and never come back, don’t it?”

“It looks like it. But I don’t know anything about it. Might have been that he was just tired of us all and decided to quit us. Anyhow, if there’s anything rightly known about it I reckon it’ll be over at Maryville. There’s where they held the inquest at the time.”

Snake evidently knew nothing more than he had told and Wilding again decided that his only chance of gaining any real information would be at Maryville. Accordingly, he got an automobile and started for that somnolent village on the next day.

After arriving at the little town, he spent two or three days in preliminary work looking toward filing the petition for mademoiselle’s divorce and arranging to secure her nominal residence in Nevada. Not until this had been accomplished did he set out to get information regarding the long-forgotten Louisiana.

His first place of call was the coroner’s office. A local undertaker held the position at this time and he had been in the country no more than ten years. He knew nothing of his predecessors and had few of their records, none going back as far as this event.

“There seems to be a lot of curiosity cropping up about this old murder,” he volunteered, when Wilding broached the subject. “Another man was in here yesterday asking about the same thing. Tall, good-looking fellow, dressed like a cowman and wearing a gun. Know him?”

Wilding asked a few further details and recognized the description as that of De Launay. This satisfied him, as he had no doubt that mademoiselle’s nominal husband was employed on the same errand as himself. So he merely stated that it was probably the man in whose interests he was working.

“Well, I didn’t know anything about him and didn’t discuss the matter with him. Fact is, I never heard of the murder so I couldn’t tell him much about it.”

“Still, I’m sure there was an inquest at the time,” said Wilding.

“There probably was, but that wouldn’t mean any too much. In the old days the coroner’s juries had a way of returning any old verdict that struck their fancies. I’ve heard of men being shot tackling some noted gun fighter and the jury bringing in a verdict of suicide because he ought to have known better than to take such a chance. Then it’s by no means uncommon to find them laying a murder whose perpetrator was unknown or out of reach against a Chinaman or Indian or some extremely unpopular individual on the theory that, if he hadn’t done this one, he might eventually commit one and, anyway, they ought to hang him on general principles and get rid of him. This was in 1900, you say?”

“About then.”

“That doesn’t sound early enough for one of the freak verdicts. Still, this country was still primitive at that time, and they might have done almost anything. Anyway there are no coroner’s records going back to that date, so I’m afraid that I can’t help you or your client.”

Wilding was discouraged, but he thought there might still be a chance in another direction, although the prospects appeared slim. Leaving the coroner he sought out the sheriff’s office and encountered a burly individual who welcomed him as some one to relieve the monotony of his days. This man was also a newcomer, or comparatively so. He had fifteen years of residence behind him. But he, too, knew nothing of French Pete’s murder.

“To be sure,” he said, after reflecting, “I’ve heard something about it and I have a slight recollection that I’ve run onto it at some time. There used to be considerable talk about the mine this here Basco had found and many a man has hunted all over the map after it. But it ain’t never been found. I’ve heard that he was shot from ambush by a gunman, and his name might have been Louisiana. Seems to me that whoever shot him must have done it because he had found the mine, and since the mine ain’t ever been discovered it looks like the murderer must have wanted its secret to remain hidden. That looks reasonable, don’t it?”

“There might be something in it,” admitted Wilding.

“Well, if that’s the case, it’s just as reasonable to figure that, if it was a white man that shot him, he’d come back in time to locate the mine. But he ain’t ever done it. Then I’d say that proves one of two things: either it wasn’t no white man that shot him or if it was the man was himself killed before he could return. Ain’t that right?”

“But if not a white man who would have done it?”

“Indians,” said the sheriff, solemnly. “Them Indians don’t want white men ringing in here and digging up the country where they hunt. Back in those days I reckon there was heaps of Indians round here and most likely one of them shot him. But, come to think of it, the files may have a record of it in ’em. We’ll go and look.”

Wilding followed him, still further convinced that he was on a hopeless search. The sheriff went into the office and led the way up to an unlighted second-story room, hardly more than an attic where, in the dust and gloom, slightly dissipated by the rays of a flashlight, he disclosed several boxes and transfer cases over which he stooped.

“Nineteen hundred. It wouldn’t be in one of these transfer cases because I know they didn’t have no such traps in those days. One of these old boxes might have something. Lend a hand while I haul them out.”