“Where has he gone?”
“Nobody knows yet. Ed Wickwire told me once that your father was shot from ambush a good many years ago. It was north of Medicine Bend, on a ranch near the Peace River; that you never found out who killed him, and that one reason why you came up into this country was to keep an eye out for a clew.”
“What about it?” asked de Spain, his tone hardening.
“I was riding home one night about a month ago from Calabasas with Sassoon. He’d been drinking. I let him do the talking. He began cussing you out, and talked pretty hard about what you’d done, and what he’d done, and what he was going to do––” Nothing, it seemed, would hurry the story. “Finally, Sassoon says: ‘That hound don’t know yet who got his dad. It was Duke Morgan; that’s who got him. I was with Duke when he turned the trick. We rode down to de Spain’s ranch one night to look up a rustler.’ That,” concluded Pardaloe, “was all Sassoon would say.”
He stopped. He seemed to wait. There was no word of answer, none of comment from the man sitting near him. But, for one, at least, who heard the passionless, monotonous recital of a murder of the long ago, there followed a silence as 382 relentless as fate, a silence shrouded in the mystery of the darkness and striking despair into two hearts––a silence more fearful than any word.
Pardaloe shuffled his feet. He coughed, but he evoked no response. “I thought you was entitled to know,” he said finally, “now that Sassoon will never talk any more.”
De Spain moistened his lips. When he spoke his voice was cracked and harsh, as if with what he had heard he had suddenly grown old.
“You are right, Pardaloe. I thank you. I––when I––in the morning. Pardaloe, for the present, go back to the Gap. I will talk with Wickwire––to-morrow.”
“Good night, Mr. de Spain.”
“Good night, Pardaloe.”