“That’ll be my message to Dunlavey that Yuma ain’t here any more,” he said grimly.
Hollis mounted and rode a short distance, but halted and turned in the saddle when he heard Ten Spot call to him.
“Boss,” he said with a grin, “I ain’t exactly blind, an’ mebbe you’ve got your eyes with you, too. But I saw that there Hazelton girl lookin’ at you sorta—”
He saw a smile on Hollis’s face, but the rest of his speech was drowned in a clatter of hoofs as the “boss’s” pony tore down the Coyote trail. Then Ten Spot smiled, mounted his pony, and rode away toward the ridge.
CHAPTER XXIV
CAMPAIGN GUNS
Of course Yuma had been amply punished for his part in the attack on Nellie Hazelton, but there still remained Dunlavey–who had instigated it. Hollis was aware of the uselessness of bringing a charge against Dunlavey–he had not forgotten his experience with Bill Watkins when he had attempted to have Greasy brought to justice. He believed that he would not have brought such a charge had there been any probability of the sheriff taking action. He felt that in inciting Yuma to attack Nellie, Dunlavey had also contemplated a blow at him. The man’s devilish ingenuity appalled him, but it also aroused a fierce anger in his heart that, in the absence of a powerful will, would have moved him to immediate vengeance.
But he contemplated no immediate action. Besides the attack on Nellie Hazelton there was another score to settle with Dunlavey, and when the time came for a final accounting he told himself that he would settle both. He knew there would come such a time. From the beginning he had felt that he and the Circle Cross manager were marked by fate for a clash. He was eager for it, but content to wait until the appointed time. And he knew that the time was not far distant.
Therefore he remained silent regarding the incident, and except to Norton and his wife, Nellie Hazelton, Ten Spot, and himself, the disappearance of Yuma remained a mystery.
Dunlavey, perhaps, might have had his suspicions, but if so he communicated them to no one, and so as the days passed the mystery ceased to be discussed and Yuma was forgotten.