“Good boy!” said Hobby Lull. “Good boy! You never shot Adam Forbes—not in the back. You hold your mouth right. It isn’t so bad, Dines. I wanted to see how you’d take it. I know you now. There’s more to come. You live a long way from here, with roughs and the river between. We’ve never seen any of your cattle. But we looked you up in the brand book. Your earmark is sharp the right, underslope the left. That yearling’s ears are marked sharp the left, underslope the right.
“Yes. And I knew that without looking at the brand book,” said Johnny. “They’ve overplayed their hand. Any more?”
“One thing more. Nothing to put before a jury—but it fits with a frame-up. This morning, Uncle Pete scouted round beyond where they quit the trail at dark. He found locations where Weir and Caney and Hales struck rich placer yesterday. A big thing—coarse gold. It was natural enough that they didn’t tell us. For that matter, they mentioned prospecting along with their saddle-thieves’ hunt. You heard ’em tell Gwinne about the saddle thieves last night. But—Adam Forbes was prospecting too. That’s what he went up there for. Caney, Weir and Hales—any one of them has just the face of a man to turn lead into gold. There’s a motive for you—a possible motive.”
“More than possible. Let me think!” Johnny nursed his knee. He saw again the cool dark windings of Redgate, the little branding fire, the brushy pass low above him—where a foe might lurk—himself and Forbes, clear outlined on the hillside, the letter Forbes had given him.
“H’m!” he said. “H’m! Exactly!” With a thoughtful face, he chanted a merry little stave:
The soapweed rules over the plain,
And the brakeman is lord of the train,
The prairie dog kneels
On the back of his heels,
Still patiently praying for rain.
“Say, Mr. Lull, isn’t it a queer lay to have the county seat inland, not on the railroad at all, like Hillsboro?”
“That’s easy. Hillsboro was the county seat before there was any railroad.”
“Oh—that way? And how do you get your mail at Garfield? Does that come from Hillsboro?”
“No. Hillsboro is the closest post office, but our mail goes to Rincon. There’s the river, you see, and no bridge. A letter takes two days and a hundred miles to get from Garfield to Hillsboro—and it’s only twenty-five miles straight across in low water.”