“Ain’t anything to say, is there?”—his voice was low with just a hint of the former defiance. “It’s mine, but you can’t prove anything. You can’t prove I drank it. D’ye think I’d be fool enough to do anything but keep my mouth shut?”
“No; I can’t prove it”—Carleton’s voice was deadly cold. “You’re out! I’ll give you twelve hours to get out of the mountains. The boys, for Coogan’s sake alone if for no other, would tear you to pieces if they knew the story. No one knows it yet but the man who found this in your pocket and myself. I’m not going to tell you again what I think of you—get out!”
Dahleen, without a word, swung slowly on his heel and started for the door.
“Wait!” said Carleton suddenly. “Here’s a pass East for you. I don’t want your blood on my hands, as I would have if Coogan’s friends, and that’s every last soul out here, got hold of you. You’ve got twelve hours—after that they’ll know—to set Coogan straight.”
Dahleen hesitated, came back, took the slip of paper with a mirthless, half-choked laugh, turned again, and the door closed behind him.
Dahleen was out.
Carleton kept his word—twelve hours—and then from the division rose a cry like the cry of savage beasts; but Regan was like a madman.
“Curse him!” he swore bitterly, breaking into a seething torrent of oaths. “What did you let him go for, Carleton? You’d no business to. You should have held him until Coogan could talk, and then we’d have had him.”
“Tommy”—Carleton laid his hand quietly on the master mechanic’s shoulder—“we’re too young out in this country for much law. I don’t think Coogan knows or ever will know again what happened in the cab that night. The doctors don’t seem quite able to call the turn on him themselves, so they’ve said to you and said to me. But whether he does or not, it doesn’t make any difference as far as Dahleen goes. It would have been murder to keep him here. And if Coogan ever can talk he’ll never put a mate in bad no matter what the consequences to himself. There’s nothing against Dahleen except that he had liquor in his possession while on duty. That’s what I fired him for—that’s the only story that’s gone out of this office. You and I and the rest are free to put the construction on it that suits us best, and there it ends. If I was wrong to let him go, I was wrong. I did what I thought was right—that’s all I can ever do.”
“Mabbe,” growled Regan, “mabbe; but, damn him, he ought to be murdered. I’d like to have had ‘em done it! It’s that smash on the head put Coogan to the bad. You’re right about one thing, I guess, he’ll never be the same Coogan again.”