CHAPTER VIII
FARLEY FOLLOWS THE TRAIL
Out of the few scanty details which seemed to him to have any bearing upon the thing he sought to know, Dick Farley strove to piece together a chain of evidence which his brain could accept as pointing to the guilt or to the innocence of James Dalton. As he drew slowly away from the cabin and toward the cliffs which fell away to the lake, he arranged in mind these things in a sort of logical order:
1. There must have been some strong motive for the killing of his partner. If Dalton’s knife driven by Dalton’s powerful hand had caused Johnny Watson’s death, what motive could have moved Dalton to the act?
This point he considered a long time. It was possible that these two men had known each other years before; that they had been enemies; that revenge had steeled the murderer’s arm. But it did not seem probable. There was something a great deal more likely.
Could it not be that Dalton, although he denied the presence of gold in the valley, had stumbled upon the same streak which Johnny had found a month ago—the Cup of Gold? That he had discovered Johnny’s tracks, had foreseen that he would return with pack-horses, and had killed him rather than that an outsider should come into his valley and steal “his” gold? But why, then, had he not killed Johnny’s partner as well?
2. The crime had been committed with a knife, unusually broad-bladed. Dalton wore such a knife.
3. Something had made Dalton tell his daughter upon the day of the murder that they were going to leave the Devil’s Pocket and go back into the world. What was it? Did it have any bearing on the case? If not, it was one of those odd coincidences which occur sometimes, and Farley did not believe very much in coincidences.
4. The man who had committed the crime had stolen the two horses, and had hidden them somewhere in the mountains to the southwest of the valley. Dalton had gone away into these same mountains and had been gone five days. Why had he gone? He had not had time to reach any of the settlements; he had brought back no sugar, no cloth.
5. Dalton had lived many years in a seclusion which was very like hiding. He looked the part of a man who had never had a sick day in his life. He was not here because the doctors had sent him. He was a man of culture, a man who had traveled and seen much of the world. He loved his daughter. Why, then, had he suffered this long exile? Why had he made her endure it?
These matters rose above other considerations in Farley’s mind. And in the end he saw no way of arriving at any kind of certainty until he had gone back to pick up the old trail; until he had found the horses; until he had seen if Dalton’s tracks led to them and back from them to the cabin.