The Trail to Yesterday

by Charles Alden Seltzer

“A deal?” said Sheila quickly, unable to control her interest.

For a moment he did not answer. He felt her gaze upon him, and he met it, smiling mysteriously. Under the sudden necessity of proving his statement, his thoughts centered upon the conclusion which had resulted from his suspicions—that Langford’s visit to Dakota concerned Doubler. Equivocation would have taken him safely away from the pitfall into which his rash words had almost plunged him, but he felt that any evasion now would only bring scorn into the eyes which he wished to see alight with something else. Besides, here was an opportunity to speak a derogatory word about his enemy, and he could not resist—could not throw it carelessly aside. There was a venomous note in his voice when he finally answered:

“The other day your father was speaking to me about gun-men. I told him that Dakota would do anything for money.”

A slow red appeared in Sheila’s cheeks, mounted to her temples, disappeared entirely and was succeeded by a paleness. She kept her gaze averted, and Duncan could not see her eyes—they were turned toward the slumberous plains that stretched away into the distance on the other side of the river. But Duncan knew that he had scored, and was not bothered over the possibility of there being little truth in his implied charge. He watched her, gloating over her, certain that at a stroke he had effectually eliminated Dakota as a rival.

Sheila turned suddenly to him. “How do you know that Dakota would do anything like that?”

Duncan smiled as he saw her lips, straight and white, and tightening coldly.

“How do I know?” he jeered. “How does a man know anything in this country? By using his eyes, of course. I’ve used mine. I’ve watched Dakota for five years. I’ve known all along that he isn’t on the square—that he has been running his branding iron on other folks’ cattle. I’ve told you that he worked a crooked deal on me, and then sent Blanca over the divide when he thought there was a chance of Blanca giving the deal away. I am told that when he met Blanca in the Red Dog Blanca told him plainly that he didn’t know anything about the calf deal. That shows how he treats his friends. He’ll do anything for money.

“The other day I saw your father at his cabin, talking to him. They had quite a confab. Your father has had trouble with Doubler—you know that. He has threatened to run Doubler off the Two Forks. I heard that myself. He wouldn’t try to run Doubler off himself—that’s too dangerous a business for him to undertake. Not wanting to take the chance himself he hires someone else. Who? Dakota’s the only gunman around these parts. Therefore, your dad goes to Dakota. He and Dakota signed a paper—I saw Dakota reading it. I’ve just put two and two together, and that’s the result. I reckon I ain’t far out of the way.”

Sheila laughed as she might have laughed had someone told her that she herself had plotted to murder Doubler—a laugh full of scorn and mockery. Yet in her eyes, which were wide with horror, and in her face, which was suddenly drawn and white, was proof that Duncan’s words had hurt her mortally.

She was silent; she did not offer to defend Dakota, for in her thoughts still lingered a recollection of the scene of the shooting in Lazette. And when she considered her father’s distant manner toward her and Ben Doubler’s grave prediction of trouble, it seemed that perhaps Duncan was right. Yet in spite of the shooting of Blanca and the evil light which was now thrown on Dakota through Duncan’s deductions, she felt confident that Dakota would not become a party to a plot in which the murder of a man was deliberately planned. He had wronged her and he had killed a man, but at the quicksand crossing that day—despite the rage which had been in her heart against him—she had studied him and had become convinced that behind his recklessness, back of the questionable impulses that seemed at times to move him, there lurked qualities which were wholly admirable, and which could be felt by anyone who came in contact with him. Certainly those qualities which she had seen had not been undiscovered by Duncan—and others.