And along that line of reasoning the next step followed logically.
Who would suggest himself as so natural a leader for a murder enterprise as Sam Mosebury, whose record was established in such matters? Certainly if this suspicion were well-founded it would be safest to know.
Spurrier, despite all he had heard of Sam Mosebury, was reluctant to entertain the thought. The man might be, as Cappeze painted him, the head and front of an infamously vicious system, yet there was something engaging and likable about him, which made it hard to believe that for hire or any motive not nearly personal he would have conspired to do murder.
So among the many claims upon Spurrier’s attention was the effort to find out where Sam Mosebury 216 stood, and it was while he was thinking of that problem that he encountered the object of his thoughts in person. The spot was one distant from his own house. Indeed it was near Colby’s cabin—still apparently empty—that the meeting took place.
The opportunity hound had made several trips over there of late, because he required to know something of Colby’s activities, and, of course, when he came he observed a surreptitious caution which sought to guard against any hint leaking through to Colby of his own surveillance. He firmly believed that Sim was “hiding out,” and that despite the seeming emptiness of his habitation he was not far away.
So it was Spurrier, the law-abiding man, who was skulking in the laurel while the notorious Mosebury walked the highway “upstanding” and openly—and the man in the thicket stooped low to escape discovery. But his foot slipped in the tangle and a rotting branch cracked under it, giving out a sound which brought Mosebury to an abrupt halt with his head warily raised and his rifle poised. He, too, had enemies and must walk in caution.
There had been times when Sam’s life had hinged on just such trivial things as the snapping of a twig, and now, peering through the thickets Spurrier saw a flinty hardness come into his eyes.
Sam stepped quietly but swiftly to the roadside and sheltered himself behind a rock. He said no word, but he waited, and Spurrier could feel that his eyes were boring into his own place of concealment with a scrutiny that went over it studiously and keenly, foot by foot.
He hurriedly considered what plan to pursue. If 217 Mosebury was in league with Colby, to show himself would be almost as undesirable a thing as to show himself to Colby direct. Yet if he stayed there with the guilty seeming of one in hiding, Mosebury would end by locating him—and might assume that the hiding was itself a proof of enmity. He decided to declare himself so he shouted boldly: “It’s John Spurrier,” and rose a moment later into view.
Then he came forward, thinking fast, and when the two met in the road, mendaciously said: