“Well, Watson!” said Custer, turning to her with a grin. “What do you make of this?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Watson, I am surprised. Neither do I.” He turned his horse back toward the cut fence. “There’s no use looking any farther in this direction. I don’t know that it’s even worth while following the trail back into the hills, for the chances are that they have it well covered. What I’ll do is to lay for them next Friday night. Maybe they’re not up to any mischief, but it looks suspicious; and if they are, I’d rather catch them here with the goods than follow them up into the hills, where about all I’d accomplish would probably be to warn them that they were being watched. I’m sorry now I had those gates locked, for it will have put them on their guard. We’ll just fix up this fence, and then we’ll ride about and take all the locks off.”
On the way home, an hour later, he asked Shannon not to say anything about their discovery or his plan to watch for the mysterious pack train the following Friday.
“It would only excite the folks needlessly,” he explained. “The chances are that there’ll be some simple explanation when I meet up with these people. As I told Jake, they may be greasers who work all the week and come up here at night for firewood. Still more likely, it’s people who don’t know they can get permission to gather deadwood for the asking, and think they are stealing it. Putting themselves to a lot of trouble for nothing, I’ll say!”
“You’ll not wait for them alone?” she asked, for she knew what he did not—that they were probably unscrupulous rascals who would not hesitate to commit any crime if they thought themselves in danger of discovery.
“Why not?” he asked. “I only want to ask them what they are doing on Ganado, and why they cut our fence.”
“Please don’t!” she begged. “You don’t know who they are or what they have been doing. They might be very desperate men, for all we know.”
“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll take Jake with me.”
“Why don’t you get Guy to go along, too?” she suggested, for she knew that he would be safer if Guy knew of his intention, since then there would be little likelihood of his meeting the men.