In a few minutes, he told Starr curtly that he could go if he wanted to; and he bettered that by muttering to the coroner that he had a notion to hold the fellow, but that he seemed to have a pretty clear alibi, and they could get him later if they wanted him. To which the coroner agreed in neighborly fashion.
Starr was saddling Rabbit for another long ride, and he was scowling thoughtfully while he did it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A PAGE OF WRITING
Wind came with the sun and went shrieking across the high levels, taking with it clouds of sand and bouncing tumbleweeds that rolled and lodged for a minute against some rock or bush and then went whirling on again in a fresh gust. Starr had not ridden two miles before his face began to feel the sting of gravel in the sand clouds. His eyes, already aching with a day's hard usage and a night of no sleep, smarted with the impact of the wind. He fumbled at the band of his big, Texas hat and pulled down a pair of motor goggles and put them on distastefully. Like blinders on a horse they were, but he could not afford to face that wind with unprotected eyes—not when so very much depended upon his eyes and his ears and the keenest, coolest faculties of his mind.
Still worry nagged at him. He wanted to know who was the man that had visited Helen May so soon after he had left, and he wanted to know why a light had shone from her window at one o'clock last night; and whether the automobile had been going to Sunlight Basin, or merely in that direction.
He hurried, for he had no patience with worries that concerned Helen May. Besides, he meant to beg a breakfast from her, and he was afraid that if he waited too late she might be out with Pat and the goats, and he would have to waste time on the kid (Vic would have resented that term as applied to himself) who might be still laid up with his sprained ankle.
He was not thinking so much this morning about the knowledge he had gained in the night. He had given several quiet hours to thought upon that subject, and he had his course pretty clearly defined in his mind. He also had Sheriff O'Malley thoroughly coached and prepared to do his part. The matter of Elfigo Apodaca, then, he laid aside for the present, and concerned himself chiefly with what on the surface were trifles, but which, taken together, formed a chain of disquieting incidents. Rabbit felt his master's desire for haste, and loped steadily along the trail, dropping now and then into his smooth fox-trot, that was almost as fast a gait; so it was still early morning when he dropped reins outside and rapped on the closed door.
Helen May opened the door cautiously, it seemed to him; a scant six inches until she saw who he was, when she cried "Oh!" in a surprised, slightly confused tone, and let him in. Starr noticed two things at the first glance he gave her. The first was the blue crocheted cap which she wore; he did not know that it was called a breakfast-cap and that it was very stylish, for Starr, you must remember, lived apart from any intimate home life that would familiarize him with such fripperies. The cap surprised him, but he liked the look of it even though he kept that liking to himself.
The second thing he noticed was that Helen May was hiding something in her right hand which was dropped to her side. When she had let him in and turned away to offer him a chair, he saw that she had the pearl-handled six-shooter.