"Pat did utt," he said.
"Who? Oh, Bat!" He looked at Matthews. "Do you mind riding back over the Pass trail; so we can go to the Ridge by the Gully, the way the outlaws escaped? I want to see where this fellow's upper lines run."
They rode back in silence almost all the way, coming up to the top shoulder of the precipice where the outlaws had come tumbling down on Matthews' hiding place a few weeks before. Wayland followed the lines of the newly planted posts, where the wire had not yet been strung.
"There is not the slightest doubt," he burst out, "this has been done to force a test case! Well, they'll get it."
"Wayland, is there no way of letting the public know what is going on?
A bet the people of this State don't know!"
"It's against the rule to give out information any more," answered
Wayland.
"Man alive—is this Russia? Y' mind me of Indians in the conjurors' tent: they tie the medicine man hand and foot and throw him into a tent; and he's t' make the tent shake. Only the devil-Indians can do it. They tie y' hand an' foot, then they expect y' to serve the Nation."
"No," corrected Wayland, "they tie us hand and foot to keep us from serving the Nation."
And the Swede's tent was not the only one they saw, as the reader well knows. Coming along the Gully on the Ridge crest, Wayland looked for the pile of illegally-taken saw logs. They were gone. There was nothing left but a timber skid, and the dry slash and a pile of saw dust emitting the odor of imprisoned fragrance in the afternoon heat; but a few yards back from the pile of saw dust stood a tepee tent with the flap hooked up; and in the opening, a wide-eyed diminutive child with a very old face and a very small frame, that looked for all the world to Wayland like a clothes rack in a pawn shop covered with colored rags.
"Waz ye wantin' me faather?"