“We’ll look up the bootlegging nest to-morrow,” Meyers said, with finality.
“What can we do if we do locate it? They’re not selling the stuff, I judge, but giving it away. That clears their skirts and forces us to deal with the men 187 themselves if there’s any dealing done. Probably they hope to start a big row among us that way.”
“We’ll await Weir’s advice.”
“Well, I’ve waited all I’m going to to-night. Seems to me for a steady, quiet, self-respecting, dignified, unhooked, unmarried, unmortgaged, unromantic man he’s skylarking and gallivanting around pretty late.”
On the rocky creek road the ranchman and his daughter Mary were driving up among the trees on their way to the cabin, a lantern swinging from the end of the wagon tongue, the horses straining against the grade. On Johnson’s beard the moisture formed beads which from time to time he brushed away. From the trees collected drops of water fell on their hands and knees. All about as they proceeded the bushes and rocks appeared in shadowy outline, to disappear in the night once more, yielding to others.
“Isn’t this cabin where we’re going the one we drove to three years ago when you were hunting some cattle?” Mary asked.
“Yes.”
“I never thought then that Ed Sorenson would be lying up there all mashed to pieces,” she said, with awed voice.
“I guess he didn’t either,” was the dry response.