“Not very. I used to ride over and look him up now and again. But I can’t imagine him doing anything mysterious. In fact I should say he’d be the last man in the world to do it.”
“Ja. I don’t know what to think of it. I’ve been running the place since I heard of the affair—luckily I wasn’t on the road just then so was able to. You’ll stop and have some scoff of course—you too, sergeant?”
“Wish I could,” said the latter, “but it’s against rules. Must get back to my camp.”
“Hang rules. Who’s to know? Glanton here won’t split.”
He was right, wherefore I forbear to say whether Sergeant Simcox made the third at that festive board or not.
We talked of trade and transport-riding and frontier matters generally, but surprisingly little of the matter that had brought me there. In fact Kendrew rather seemed to shirk the subject; not in any sort of suspicious manner let me explain, but rather as if he thought the whole thing a bore, and a very great one at that.
“You see, Glanton,” he explained, presumably detecting a surprised look on my face, called there by the exceedingly light way in which he was taking things. “You see it isn’t as if we had had a lot to do with each other. Of course I don’t for a moment hope that the poor old boy has come to grief, in fact I can’t help feeling that he may turn up any moment and want to know what the devil I’ve taken up my quarters at his place for, in this free and easy way.”
After a good dinner, washed down with a glass or so of grog, we went to look at the place where the missing man had slept. This didn’t help towards any theory. If there had been foul play, whoever had been concerned in it had removed all traces long ago.
“A good hound, requisitioned at first, would have done something towards clearing up the mystery,” I said.
“Yes, but you might as well have requisitioned a good elephant, for all you’d get either round here,” laughed Kendrew. “Well, I shall just give it up as a bad job and leave it to Simcox. That’s what he draws his pay for. I’ll just sit tight and boss up things so long. That’s my job.”