“And you tried to find Hogarty?”
“Hogarty was dead,” Leeds said. “He’d been shot in the abdomen. Another prospector took care of him. That prospector’s name was Carl Freehome. I, of course, didn’t know that until later. I got there to the shack, found it deserted, found Emily’s note. We’d struck it rich while we were working on a pocket. That had been before Emily showed up. We didn’t let Emily know. Hogarty refused to let her in on that. The gold was cached under the floor of the fireplace. I dug up the gold, used the provisions I’d got as a stake, and made it through to White Horse. I found no trace of Emily.
“Then was when I had the idea of throwing the authorities off the track by going out as Bill Hogarty. Then if anyone accused her of murdering Bill Hogarty, the records would show that he’d left the country. If they claimed it was Leeds she’d murdered, Leeds could show up very much alive and well. It was the best I could do for her under the circumstances.”
“You finally found her in Seattle?”
“Yes.”
“When did you hear about this man Freehome?”
“I didn’t hear about him. She did years later. She told me a few weeks ago when we met. I employed a detective agency to try to find him. The said he’d been seen two years ago in Dawson City. There, they lost his trail. Later on they heard a rumor he was in Seattle.”
“What became of Hogarty’s body?”
“After he died,” Leeds said, “Freehome loaded it on his sled, went up to the cabin. He found the hole where I’d dug the gold cache out of the floor, and was shrewd enough to tell that it had been a pretty good cache. He started looking around, and found the rest of the pocket. Lord knows how much was left in it. I wasn’t interested at the time. I was trying to find Emily... That’s my theory anyway, putting two and two together from the facts as I discovered them.
“Put yourself in Freehome’s place. It was a wild country. Winter was coming on. The ground was freezing up hard. Freehome had a chance for a stake. He dug a shallow grave, buried Hogarty, and went to work. When he’d finished with the claim, he left Hogarty where he was. He had no other choice. Legally, the claim was ours. He’d stripped it of the rest of the pocket. Naturally he didn’t want to have an argument over who owned the gold... I wanted to find him and tell him he could keep the gold — if he had any left. What I wanted was his story. I hoped that Hogarty had made some statement before he died. That’s why we flew north.”