“Looking for me?” he asked sharply. He was ready to spring upon the man at the first sign of a hostile move.
Dawson turned quickly. “So there you are,” he exclaimed. “Yes, I was looking for you and I have had the deuce of a time finding you.” He seemed perfectly at ease and not in the least taken back by Scott’s sudden appearance.
“I was transferred up here yesterday morning,” Scott explained. He thought maybe Dawson’s curiosity to know what had become of him the night before that would show itself, but it had no effect.
“So I found out later,” he admitted so frankly that Scott wondered whether he really could have been with Dugan, or whether he could possibly have mistaken the voice on the ’phone the night before.
“Let’s sit down, I have a lot of things I want to talk over with you,” and without waiting for an answer he sat down on the ground with his back against the great rock and his face toward the rugged mountain peaks. Scott accepted the invitation but carefully selected a position where he would still be within easy reach of Dawson’s pistol arm.
“I could sit here for a week and look at that view,” Dawson said wistfully, and the dreamy look was stealing into his face again, “but that’s not what I came for,” he added, bracing himself up quickly. “That was a clever job you did in ferreting out those extra sheep. I don’t know where in the thunder you got onto all that stuff, but you seemed to be able to produce the goods. However, I think you overreached yourself a little and made some statements which you can never prove.”
“I think I was careful not to say anything which was not true,” Scott replied cautiously.
“Possibly you were, but stating a truth is one thing and proving it is often something different.”
“I think that I can prove them,” Scott said quietly.
“Well, I doubt it. Now let’s admit for the sake of the argument that all the statements you made were true, excepting, of course, your ability to prove them. You proved that there were more sheep than there were permits, but you did not prove how they got on the forest. Your inference is that Dugan let them through that hole in the fence while he was counting the others through the chute. But you can’t prove it. Maybe he put them all through the fence without counting them, but there was no one there to see it. Your evidence is entirely circumstantial and would not stand in any court.