Bush's questioning of Kathleen was perfunctory. He grinned at her refusal to give information. "I wouldn't think much of you if you did," he admitted, and went on a tour of investigation, from which he drew some very accurate deductions.
Turkey and Rennie arrived, and for the first time Angus heard of Braden's dying declaration that Gavin French was responsible for the killing of Adam Mackay. But beyond the bare statement there were no details. Braden's end had come before he had been able to amplify it.
"Do you suppose it's so?" Turkey queried. "Or was he just trying to hang something on Gavin?"
Angus did not know. There were times, in the years, when he had been puzzled by Gavin's peculiar regard for him. There had always been something in the big man's eyes which he could not read, something veiled, inscrutable. He alone of the brothers had been reluctant to take up their father's quarrel with Angus. This might be the reason.
"If he killed father," said Turkey grimly, "he's got it coming to him. You take Blake, and I'll take him."
"There is nothing to go on but what Braden said," Angus pointed out. But he thought of his father's dying words. His father had not wished to lay a feud upon him. It fitted.
At dawn, acting on Bush's theory, they headed north for the pass. When they struck it there were fresh footprints, many of them, heading into the hills.
"That's them," said Bush. "Hey, Dave?"
"Sure," said Rennie. "It ain't Injuns. These horses is shod."
A mountain pass is not a road. It merely represents the only practicable way of winning through the jumbled world of hills. Railway construction in the mountains follows the pass, but persons who admire scenery from vestibuled coaches know nothing of the old pass of the pack-trail, the binding brush, the fallen timber, the slides, the swift creeks, the gulches, the precipices to which the trail must cling.