After soaking the plate in alcohol, they placed it outside in the strong dry mountain wind; and in this way dried it in half an hour. Then awkwardly, with unsteady fingers, Otis placed the negative in the printing-frame. Mariel waited with bated breath.
“There!” Otis exclaimed when at last the print was finished. “Look, Mariel! Isn’t it astounding? I’ve suspected it, but I’ve never breathed a word of my suspicions to a soul. This solves everything—everything!”
Twenty minutes later, having made an additional print, and with the negative carefully wrapped to protect it from breakage, Otis announced his readiness to leave the cabin. Both were jubilant as they mounted their horses and started down the trail. Suddenly Mariel broke out with an exclamation of annoyance.
“I’ve forgotten something,” she told Otis ruefully. “No, you needn’t bother. You ride on down the trail. I’ll go back to the cabin, but I’ll be with you again in five minutes.”
Otis was puzzled, but he did not question her. Mariel galloped back to the ranger station, flung herself from her horse, and ran into the cabin. She seized the telephone, and called for the forest supervisor in Jackson.
“Call the Sheriff and tell him that if he wants Otis Carr, he can get him at the Footstool ranch in two hours,” she directed without preliminaries. “Phone the Footstool ranch and tell Sterling Carr that Otis is coming home. Tell him to have all the boys there to meet him—everyone who was at the meeting the other night. He’ll understand. What? No, I haven’t time to explain. Come to the Footstool ranch yourself, and you’ll learn everything. That’s all. Good-by.”
Without giving the puzzled supervisor time to question her about her startling directions, she hung up the receiver and ran from the cabin. She remounted, and rode down the trail to join Otis.
“It’s all right,” she smiled at him. “We can take our time. There’s no great hurry to get back to the ranch, now.”
“I don’t think I’ll go back to the ranch,” Otis announced. “I think I’d better look up the Sheriff first thing, and place this evidence in his hands.”