He was not injured, then. The sudden sense of relief left her weak, and for a moment she did not consider the other danger that confronted him. He was safe! That was all she cared about just then. Later she commenced to realize the gravity of his situation, and the innocent part that she had taken in involving him in the toils of the scheme which her interference must have suggested to those actually responsible for the traffic in stolen liquor, the guilt of which they had now cleverly shifted to the shoulders of an innocent man. Intuitively she guessed Slick Allen’s part in the unhappy contretemps of the previous night; for she knew of the threats he had made against Custer Pennington, and of his complicity in the criminal operations of the bootleggers.
How much she knew! More than any other, she knew all the details of the whole tragic affair. She alone could untangle the knotted web, and yet she dared not until there was no other way. She dared not let them guess that she knew more of the matter than they. She could not admit such knowledge without revealing the source of it and exposing herself to the merited contempt of these people whose high regard had become her obsession, whose friendship was her sole happiness, and the love she had conceived for one of them the secret altar at which she worshiped.
In the last extremity, if there was no alternative, she would sacrifice everything for him. To that her love committed her; but she would wait until there was no other way. She had suffered so grievously through no fault of her own that she clung with desperation to the brief happiness which had come into her life, and which was now threatened, once again because of no wrong-doing on her part.
Fate had been consistently unkind to her. Was it fair that she should suffer always for the wickedness of another? She had at least the right to hope and wait.
But there was something that she could do. When she turned Baldy down the hill from the Penningtons’, she took the road home that led past the Evanses’ ranch, and, turning in, dismounted and tied Baldy at the fence. Her knock was answered by Mrs. Evans.
“Is Guy here?” asked Shannon.
Hearing her voice, Guy came from his room, drawing on his coat.
“You’re getting as bad as the Penningtons,” he said, laughing. “They have no respect for Christian hours!”
“Something has happened,” she said, “that I thought you should know about. Custer was arrested last night by government officers and taken to Los Angeles. He was out on the Apache at the time. No one seems to know where he was arrested, or why; but the supposition is that they found him in the hills, for the man who runs the feed barn in the village—Jim—told the colonel that the officers got horses from him and rode up toward the ranch, and that it was a couple of hours later that they brought Custer back on the Apache. The stableman just told me that the Apache had not been in his stall all night, and I know—Custer told me not to tell, but it will make no difference now—that he was going up into the hills last night to try to catch the men who have been bringing down loads on burros every Friday night for a long time, and who cut his fence last Friday.”
She looked straight into Guy’s eyes as she spoke; but he dropped his as a flush mounted his cheek.