"Who's Alison?" cut in the officer sharply.
"Why, I don't know," said the other with a suppressed yawn. "Never heard of him."
Dexter lighted another match and peered searchingly at the face before him, and the boy's blue eyes returned his gaze with a look of blandest innocence. "Do you know a woman named Alison?"
"No," was the unequivocal answer.
"You didn't speak that name a moment ago?"
"Not that I know of."
"Where's Saddle Notch?"
"Is it a place—or what? Did I say that too?" Smith's mouth quivered in the faintest suggestion of a grin. "Gee, I must have been having a whale of a dream—thinking up all those things!"
Dexter stood for a moment in baffled silence, and then turned away with an impatient shrug. What was the use? The boy had all the best of it. The inquisition might be kept up for hours, and always he could cling to his one irrefutable assertion—that his talk was the meaningless jargon of dreams. The officer had no vestige of proof to establish the truth or the untruth of any statement that was made.
Nevertheless, Dexter was convinced that Smith had not been asleep, and he could not believe that the boy was talking to himself. He had said good-by to "Alison." Had he contrived in some unaccountable manner to get into communication with Alison Rayne? Impossible! The girl was Colonel Devreaux's prisoner, and by this time they would be camping thirty or forty miles farther down the valley. How to reach her by voice, except through radio or telephone? There was no other conceivable way.