“I never heard of anybody in this country by that name,” he returned, shaking his head with a show of entire sincerity. “Who was tellin’ you about him—who said he was the man?”
A little confused, and more than a little disappointed 189 over the apparent failure of her news to surprise from Chadron a betrayal of his guilty connection with Mark Thorn, she related the adventure of the morning, the finding of the cap, the meeting with Macdonald and his neighbors. She reserved nothing but what Lassiter had told her of Thorn’s employers and his bloody work in that valley.
Chadron shook his head with an air of serious concern. There was a look of commiseration in his eyes for her credulity, and shameful duping by the cunning word of Alan Macdonald.
“That’s one of Macdonald’s lies,” he said, something so hard and bitter in his voice when he pronounced that name that she shuddered. “I never heard of anybody named Thorn, here or anywheres else. That rustler captain he’s a deep one, Miss Frances, and he was only throwin’ dust in your eyes. But I’m glad you told me.”
“But they said—the man he called Lassiter said—that Macdonald would find Nola, and bring her home,” she persisted, unwilling yet to accept Chadron’s word against that old man’s, remembering the paper with the list of names.
“He’s bald-faced enough to try even a trick like that!” he said.
Chadron looked impatiently toward the house, muttering something about the slowness of “them women,” avoiding Frances’ eyes. For she did not believe Saul Chadron, and her distrust was eloquent in her face.
“You mean that he’d pretend a rescue and bring her back, just to make sympathy for himself and his side of this trouble?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Chadron nodded, frowning sternly.