“Maybe he fell off a cliff,” Ken observed.
“The Headless Hollow locality has plenty of hazards. Something happened to him, that’s sure.”
“Could he have stayed on there alone year after year?” Jack asked thoughtfully.
“I don’t see how, but there’s a small lake where a man could fish, and if he had ammunition he could provide himself with meat. But the winters are bitterly cold. No, I don’t figure even a tough old knot like Joe Hansart could have made out. He must be dead. The question is, how did he die?”
“That seems to trouble you,” Mr. Livingston said. “Friend of yours?”
“Never set eyes on Joe except once or twice. It’s the stories about Headless Hollow that bother me.”
“Stories?”
“It began years ago,” the rancher said, lighting his pipe. “I suppose my father’s death and Stony’s disappearance marked the beginning.”
“Was it known they were supposed to have struck gold?”
“Well, you can’t keep such things completely dark,” Warner replied with a smile. “I was a boy at the time, so all I know is hearsay. At first, feeling was high against Stony, because people thought he was responsible for my father’s death. My mother never shared that feeling. She always said the man was falsely accused—that it must have been an accident. But you know how folks are—they always want to blame someone. Stony could have cleared himself, but he ran away, and that made it look bad.”