“No. He didn’t like women.
Never had one on the place. Two ranch hands
that are still at the Wassons’ and himself, that
was all. The Wassons are the folks who bought
the ranch.”
No housekeeper then, and no son born out of wedlock,
so far as any evidence went. All that glib lying
in the doctor’s office, all that apparent openness
and frankness, gone by the board! The man in
the cabin, reported by Maggie Donaldson, had been
David Livingstone. Somehow, some way, he had
got Judson Clark out of the country and spirited him
East. Not that the how mattered just yet.
The essential fact was there, that David Livingstone
had been in this part of the country at the time Maggie
Donaldson had been nursing Judson Clark in the mountains.
Bassett sat back and chewed the end of his cigar thoughtfully.
The sheer boldness of the scheme which had saved
Judson Clark compelled his admiration, but the failure
to cover the trail, the ease with which he had picked
it up, made him suspicious.
He rose and threw away his cigar.
“You say this David went East, when he had sold
out the place. Do you remember where he lived?”
“Some town in eastern Pennsylvania. I’ve
forgotten the name.”
“I’ve got to be sure I’m wrong,
and then go ahead,” he said, as he got his hat.
“I’ll see those men at the ranch, I guess,
and then be on my way. How far is it?”
It was about ten miles, along a bad road which kept
him too much occupied for any connected thought.
But his sense of exultation persisted. He had
found Judson Clark.
Dick’s decision to cut himself off from Elizabeth
was born of his certainty that he could not see her
and keep his head. He was resolutely determined
to keep his head, until he knew what he had to offer
her. But he was very unhappy. He worked
sturdily all day and slept at night out of sheer fatigue,
only to rouse in the early morning to a conviction
of something wrong before he was fully awake.
Then would come the uncertainty and pain of full
consciousness, and he would lie with his arms under
his head, gazing unblinkingly at the ceiling and preparing
to face another day.
There was no prospect of early relief, although David
had not again referred to his going away. David
was very feeble. The look of him sometimes sent
an almost physical pain through Dick’s heart.
But there were times when he roused to something
like his old spirit, shouted for tobacco, frowned
over his diet tray, and fought Harrison Miller when
he came in to play cribbage in much his old tumultuous
manner.
Then, one afternoon late in May, when for four days
Dick had not seen Elizabeth, suddenly he found the
decision as to their relation taken out of his hands,
and by Elizabeth herself.
He opened the door one afternoon to find her sitting
alone in the waiting-room, clearly very frightened
and almost inarticulate. He could not speak
at all at first, and when he did his voice, to his
dismay, was distinctly husky.
