“No.  He died of heart failure.  There was an autopsy.  But he had a bad cut on his head.  Of course, he may have fallen—­Bill and Jake were away.  They’d driven some cattle out on the range.  It was two days before he was found, and it would have been longer if Mr. Wasson hadn’t ridden out to talk to him about buying.  He found him dead in his bed, but there was blood on the floor in the next room.  I washed it up myself.”

“Of course,” she added, when Bassett maintained a puzzled silence, “I may be all wrong.  He might have fallen in the next room and dragged himself to bed.  But he was very neatly covered up.”

“It’s your idea, then, that this boy put him into the bed?”

“I don’t know.  He wasn’t seen about the place.  He’s never been here since.  But the posse found a horse with the Livingstone brand, saddled, dead in Dry River Canyon when it was looking for Judson Clark.  Of course, that was a month later.  The men here, Bill and Jake, claimed it had wandered off, but I’ve often wondered.”

After a time Bassett got up and took his leave.  He was confused and irritated.  Here, whether creditably or not, was Dick Livingstone accounted for.  There was a story there, probably, but not the story he was after.  This unknown had been at the ranch when Henry Livingstone died, had perhaps been indirectly responsible for his death.  He had, witness the horse, fled after the thing happened.  Later on, then, David Livingstone had taken him into his family.  That was all.

Except for that identification of Gregory’s, and for the photograph of Judson Clark....  For a moment he wondered if the two, Jud Clark and the unknown, could be the same.  But Dry River would have known Clark.  That couldn’t be.

He almost ditched the car on his way back to Norada, so deeply was he engrossed in thought.

XX

On the seventh of June David and Lucy went to the seashore, went by the order of various professional gentlemen who had differed violently during the course of David’s illness, but who now suddenly agreed with an almost startling unanimity.  Which unanimity was the result of careful coaching by Dick.

He saw in David’s absence his only possible chance to go back to Norada without worry to the sick man, and he felt, too, that a change, getting away from the surcharged atmosphere of the old house, would be good for both David and Lucy.

For days before they started Lucy went about in a frenzy of nervous energy, writing out menus for Minnie for a month ahead, counting and recounting David’s collars and handkerchiefs, cleaning and pressing his neckties.  In the harness room in the stable Mike polished boots until his arms ached, and at the last moment with trunks already bulging, came three gift dressing-gowns for David, none of which he would leave behind.

“I declare,” Lucy protested to Dick, “I don’t know what’s come over him.  Every present he’s had since he was sick he’s taking along.  You’d think he was going to be shut up on a desert island.”