“If she saw it done and could speak, it would clear me,” said Steve, slowly. “Have you any suspicion who it could have been?”
“Not a hint,” said Aleck. “And I’ve talked with Dan Mulcahy, and he can’t find a grain to go on against anyone. He’s your friend, Steve, and would give a hand to find anyone else to fasten it on, but he admits that there wasn’t a man in the township known to have an atom of a grudge or quarrel with Durgan. He was a harmless, inoffensive sort of chap. You know, Steve, although Dan hates to admit it even to me, he thinks you did it—did it in drink, maybe, and forgotten it yourself. I laughed at him.”
“Ah well,” said Steve, wearily, “I don’t want to bother thinking about it. What did Ess say when she knew I’d been down to the Ridge and was in hiding here?”
Aleck Gault told him, and re-told him, and spoke of every scrap of Ess and her doings he could think of. It seemed to be the only thing Steve took any interest in, and even discussions or suggestions for his getting out of the hills did not stir his apathy.
Aleck took a very troubled mind with him when he left that night, and it was a rather short-tempered answer he gave to Ned Gunliffe when he rode into the Ridge, and Ned looked at his sweating horse and drawled “Been ridin’ hard, Aleck? Haven’t run across the runaway by any chance, have you?”
A thought struck Aleck as he was turning his horse loose in the horse paddock. He caught his own horse by the mane again before it moved away, swung himself on to its bare back, and cantered over to the feeding mob of horses. The saddle marks were still plain on Ned Gunliffe’s horse, and by the black sweat marks it had evidently been ridden just as hard as his own that afternoon.
Aleck went straight to Scottie.
“Was Ned Gunliffe out this afternoon?” he asked. “I’m asking for a reason, Scottie.”
“He was out,” said Scottie, “went just after you did. Said he was ridin’ over to The Trickle for his pipe that he’d left there. He’s no long back, an’ I heard that he said he’d sat down for a rest when he got there and had fallen asleep.”
“The Trickle is half-an-hour’s easy ride,” said Aleck, thoughtfully, “and it’s a long and a hard half hour his horse did this afternoon.”