And yet the malevolent passions that gripped the big man would not tolerate the thought of opposition. Taylor was the only man who stood between him and his desires, and Taylor must be removed.
During the days of Carrington’s confinement to his rooms above the Castle—awaiting the slow healing of the wound Taylor had inflicted upon him, and the many bruises that marred his face—mementoes of the terrible punishment Taylor had inflicted upon him—the big man nursed his venomous thoughts and laid plans for revenge upon his enemy.
As soon as he was able to appear in Dawes—to undergo without humiliation the inspection of his face by the citizens of the town—for news of his punishment had been whispered broadcast—he boarded a westbound train.
He got off at Nogel, a little mining town sitting at the base of some foothills in the Sangre de Christo Range, some miles from Dawes.
He spent three days in Nogel, interrogating the resident manager of the “Larry’s Luck” mine, talking with miners and storekeepers and quizzing men in saloons—and at the beginning of the fourth day he returned to Dawes.
At about the time Miss Harlan and Taylor were sitting on the rock on the bank of the river near the Arrow, Carrington was in the courthouse at Dawes, leaning over Judge Littlefield’s desk. A tall, sleek-looking man of middle age, with a cold, steady eye and a smooth smile, stood near Carrington. The man was neatly attired, and looked like a prosperous mine-owner or operator.
But had the judge looked sharply at his hands when he gripped the one that was held out to him when Carrington introduced the man; or had he been a physiognomist of average ability, he could not have failed to note the smooth softness of the man’s hands and the gleam of guile and cunning swimming deep in his eyes.
But the judge noted none of those things. He had caught the man’s name—Mint Morton—and instantly afterward all his senses became centered upon what the man was saying.
For the man spoke of conscience—and the judge had one of his own—a guilty one. So he listened attentively while the man talked.
The thing had been bothering the man for some months—or from the time it happened, he said. And he had come to make a confession.