She discerned his motive in asking these questions, but it made no difference to her and she answered truthfully. She did not intend to shield Dakota; the fact that Doubler had not been killed outright did not lessen the gravity of the offense in her eyes.
“Before you found Doubler!” Langford’s voice came with a vicious snap. “You met him coming from Doubler’s cabin, I suppose?”
“Yes,” she answered wearily, “I met him coming from there. I was on the trail—going there—and I heard the shot. I know Dakota killed him.”
Langford made an exclamation of satisfaction.
“Well, it isn’t so bad, after all. You’ll have to be a witness against Dakota. And very likely Doubler will die—probably is dead by this time; will certainly be dead before the Lazette doctor can reach his cabin. No, my dear,” he added, smiling at Sheila, “it isn’t so bad, after all.”
Sheila rose. Her poignant anger against him was equaled only by her disgust. He expected her to bear witness against Dakota; desired her to participate in his scheme to fasten upon the latter the entire blame for the commission of a crime in which he himself was the moving factor.
“I shall not bear witness against him,” she told Langford coldly. “For I am going away—back East—to-morrow. Don’t imagine that I have been in complete ignorance of what has been going on; that I have been unaware of the part you have played in the shooting of Doubler. I have known for quite a long while that you had decided to have Doubler murdered, and only recently I learned that you hired Dakota to kill him. And this morning, when I met Dakota on the river trail, he dropped this from a pocket of his vest.” She fumbled at her bodice and produced the signed agreement, holding it out to him.
As she expected, he repudiated it, though his face paled a little as he read it.
“This is a forgery, my dear,” he said, in the old, smooth, even voice that she had grown to despise.
“No,” she returned calmly, “it is not a forgery. You forget that only a minute ago you practically admitted it to be a true agreement by telling me that I should have allowed Doubler to die. You are an accomplice in the shooting of Doubler, and if I am compelled to testify in Dakota’s trial I shall tell everything I know.”