Scott felt like a man coming out of a trance. He passed his hand absently over his eyes. His forehead was clammy with a cold perspiration. He felt sick. Not a sound came from the valley below. The silence of death in the little cañon seemed uncanny after the pandemonium of the moment before. He could not think, he had no plan; he did not know where he was going; he just had a wild desire to get away from that loathsome place.
Shudderingly he backed out of that little clump of aspen and staggered blindly toward the forest.
CHAPTER XII
THE INTERCEPTED MESSAGE
When Scott realized where he was he found himself sitting in the shade of the pines beside Jed. The horse seemed to realize that something was wrong. He was standing close with his soft muzzle almost resting on his master’s shoulder. For one wild moment Scott thought that he might have been dreaming, but the dirt on his shirt where he had been lying in the aspens and the vividness of the picture soon forced him to accept it as a reality.
Watching the fate of that great mass of sheep was the most tragic experience of his life. It seemed to him like a personal catastrophe. Certainly this would put a stop to any further attempts on the part of the stockmen to evade the laws. Judged only as a financial problem the loss of that band would cost Jed Clark more than he would have gained by crowding on all the extras that the range could possibly support under any conditions. And to Scott the financial loss was the smallest part of it; to him it appeared more in the light of a crime.
His first impulse was to ride directly down to the supervisor’s office and report the whole affair, taking it for granted that the horrible accident would make Jed Clark penitent and cause him to give up the fight. Fortunately, however, he did not act upon the impulse. Instead he tried to analyze the case as coldly and logically as he could. After all, would Jed feel as he did? He knew that Jed was not very soft hearted. His experience in the horse trade had taught him that much. Moreover, he knew that most of these men looked on sheep as values in wool and mutton rather than animals, and would probably look on the death of those poor beasts as so many dollars to be charged off to profit and loss. It would make Jed even more determined than ever to make good his loss by any means within his reach. No one but his own men knew of his loss and he had the extra sheep in the other cañon to conceal.
The more Scott thought about it the clearer it became to him that it was his duty to push the case right through to a finish as he had been doing before the accident. After all, he had no proof against Jed as yet and would not have until the recount had been made and he had shown up the hidden sheep. He had heard and seen enough to convict a dozen men, but he had only his own word for it and he felt sure that he, a stranger, could not make himself believed as against Dawson, an old timer with a good record in the service. No, he must push the thing through, and he must be about it.
He glanced at his watch. It was almost four o’clock. He did not think there was much danger of their trying to move the sheep out of the cañon, but he decided to have Baxter watch them. He wanted his advice anyway. He would be a good witness, too, and anything he could learn from the herders would help to back Scott’s testimony.
With a final glance at the scene of the tragedy he mounted and rode swiftly away in search of Baxter. He guessed rightly that he would find him patrolling the boundary of his district. There was no trace of him but he followed his hunch to turn to the left and soon ran onto him.