His voice trailed off. In the stillness David
sat, touching with tender tremulous fingers what might
be Dick’s last message, and gazing at the picture
of Dick in his uniform. He knew what they all
thought, that Dick was dead and that he held his final
words in his hands, but his militant old spirit refused
to accept that silent verdict. Dick might be
dead to them, but he was living. He looked around
the room defiantly, resentfully. Of all of them
he was the only one to have faith, and he was bound
to a chair. He knew them. They would sit
down supinely and grieve, while time passed and Dick
fought his battle alone.
No, by God, he would not be bound to a chair.
He raised himself and stood, swaying on his shaking
legs.
“You’ve given up,” he said scornfully.
“You make a few days’ search, and then
you quit. It’s easy to say he’s dead,
and so you say he’s dead. I’m going
out there myself, and I’ll make a search—”
He collapsed into the chair again, and looked at them
with shamed, appealing eyes. Bassett was the
first to break the silence, speaking in a carefully
emotionless tone.
“I haven’t given up for a minute.
I’ve given up the search, because he’s
beyond finding just now. Either he’s got
away, or he is—well, beyond help.
We have to go on the hypothesis that he got away,
and in that case sooner or later you’ll hear
from him. He’s bound to remember you in
time. The worst thing is this charge against
him.”
“He never killed Howard Lucas,” David
said, in a tone of conviction. “Harrison,
read Mr. Bassett my statement to you.”
Bassett took the statement home with him that night,
and studied it carefully. It explained a great
deal that had puzzled him before; Mrs. Wasson’s
story and David’s arrival at the mountain cabin.
But most of all it explained why the Thorwald woman
had sent him after Dick. She knew then, in spite
of her protests to David, that Jud Clark had not killed
Lucas.
He paced the floor for an hour or two, sunk in thought,
and then unlocked a desk drawer and took out his bankbook.
He had saved a little money. Not much, but
it would carry him over if he couldn’t get another
leave of absence. He thought, as he put the book
away and prepared for bed, that it was a small price
to pay for finding Clifton Hines and saving his own
soul.
Dick had written his note, and placed it where Bassett
would be certain to see it. Then he found his
horse and led him for the first half mile or so of
level ground before the trail began to descend.
He mounted there, for he knew the animal could find
its way in the darkness where he could not.
He felt no weariness and no hunger, although he had
neither slept nor eaten for thirty-odd hours, and
as contrasted with the night before his head was clear.
He was able to start a train of thought and to follow
it through consecutively for the first time in hours.
Thought, however, was easier than realization, and
to add to his perplexity, he struggled to place Bassett
and failed entirely. He remained a mysterious
and incomprehensible figure, beginning and ending
with the trail.
