They stopped to speak to the men, and, just as they were leaving, Mr. Bronson led the supervisor aside. “Are you going to be in your office to-morrow morning, Mr. Ramsey?”
“Yes, I expect to be.”
“Me and the rest of the boys have something we want to talk over with you, if you’ll have the time.”
“Come right ahead,” Mr. Ramsey urged. He was always glad of an opportunity to coöperate with the settlers in any way and was very popular with them on that account.
“Better come over first thing in the morning,” Mr. Ramsey called to Scott as they parted in town, “I want to go over your records and the evidence you have collected. Maybe we can get that out of the way before those ranchers come in.”
Scott was kept busy all evening telling the story of the bursting of the dam. Even then he did not satisfy them all and there were so many others waiting to hear it in the morning that he was glad of the excuse to go to the office early. He found the supervisor already there getting together the evidence which he had on hand.
“Looks pretty good, Burton,” he said as Scott came in, “but I can’t find a thing to prove certainly that Dawson was Jed’s partner or was even vitally implicated in this scullduggery in any way. There is no question about it in my mind now but there is no proof which would stand in court.”
“I am afraid there isn’t,” Scott admitted. “I was in hopes that Jed would turn against him, but now that he is gone I can’t think of any way to prove it.”
Just then there was a tramping of many feet in the hall and the delegation of small ranchers filed into the office. Wren, the big gruff-mannered man who had threatened to thrash Scott for refusing the invitation to dinner when he stopped there to issue a free use permit, was the spokesman.
“I’m not going to take up much of your time,” he said in his usual rough way. “I expect you are sort of busy trying to fix up this mess and have mighty little time to talk about anything else. We don’t like the idea much of jumping on a man when he is down, but we figure that if we are going to get square with Dawson at all, now is our chance. Moreover, we want to see that justice is done to a friend of ours.”