“Shoot,” Monty invited calmly. “My mind’s plumb full of unpleasant things, and talking about them can’t make it any worse, Miss Connolly.”
“Well, then, I’ve been up to that grave. And it wasn’t made by any murderer. I somehow know it wasn’t. A murderer would have been in a hurry, and I should think he’d try to hide it—and he wouldn’t pick the prettiest spot he could find. And I know perfectly well, Mr. Girard, that if I had killed a man, I wouldn’t spat the dirt down over his grave and make it as nice and even as that grave is up there. And somebody picked some flowers and laid them at the head, Mr. Girard. They had wilted—and I don’t suppose you noticed them.
“Besides,” she finished, after an unconscious pause that seemed to sum up her reasoning and lend weight to the argument, “the cat knows all about it. She tried as hard as ever she could to tell me. I—this may sound foolish, but I can’t help believing it—I think the cat was there looking on, and I’m pretty sure it was some one the cat knew and liked.”
Monty poured coffee all over Patricia’s plate, his hand shook so. “Gary kinda made a pal uh that cat,” he blurted, before he realized what meaning Patricia must read into the sentence.
“The cat was here when Gary arrived, I suppose,” Patricia retorted sharply, squaring her chin. “I can’t imagine him bringing a cat with him.”
A look of relief flashed into Monty’s face. “That cat’s been here on the place for about eight years, as close as I can figure. Steve Carson got it from a woman in Vegas when it was a kitten, and packed it out here in a nose bag hung on his burro’s pack. Him and the cat wasn’t ever more than three feet apart. There’s been something queer about that cat, ever since Steve came up missing.”
Monty started for the door, having it in his mind to call the boy to breakfast. But a look in Patricia’s eyes stopped him, and he turned back and sat down opposite her at the table.
“I’d let that boy sleep—all day if he wants to,” Patricia remarked. “He’ll do enough talking about us and our affairs, as it is. I wish you’d tell me about this Steve Carson. I never heard of him before.”
Whereupon Monty related the mysteriously gruesome story to Patricia, who listened so absorbedly that she neglected a very good breakfast. Afterward she announced that she would wash the dishes and keep breakfast warm for Joe, who appeared to be afflicted with a mild form of sleeping sickness, since Monty yelled at him three times at a distance of no more than ten feet, and elicited no response save a grunt and a hitch of the shoulders under the blankets. Monty left him alone, after that, and started off on another exhaustive search of the cañon, tactfully leaving Patricia to herself.
Patricia was grateful for the temporary solitude. Never in her life had she been so full of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Her forced resentment against Gary had suffered a complete collapse; the revulsion of feeling was overwhelming. It seemed to Patricia that her very longing for him should bring him back.