The morning after Trevors's arrival, Judith was up betimes and breakfasted alone. Lunching early, noon found her in the office expecting Charlie Miller. She was at work on the pay-roll book when her telephone rang. It was Doc Tripp and there was suppressed excitement in his voice.
"Bad news, Judy," he began. "It sure looks as though you were getting your share."
"What is it, Doc?" she broke in sharply. "Tell me!"
"It's Charlie Miller. Hurt. No, not bad. Thrown off his horse, back in Squaw Creek cañon. And—robbed."
Quickly he told all that had happened. Miller, hastening back with the wage money, was riding through the narrow gorge when a man had sprung out suddenly in front of him. Miller's horse, shying, swerving unexpectedly, had thrown him. Before he could get to his feet the bag of gold under his coat had been torn off, his revolver wrenched away and the highwayman, his face masked with a red bandana handkerchief, had run into the thick timber.
"Charlie just walked in, reeling like a drunken man," Tripp concluded. "His fall and a rap over the head with a gun-butt have made him pretty sick. I am sending out a posse of men from this end to try and get the stick-up man. You'd better do the same up there."
For a moment Judith sat staring at the telephone dully. Robbed of a thousand dollars, and in broad daylight! A thing like this had not occurred on the Blue Lake for a dozen years.
"Bayne Trevors!" she gasped. For, suddenly, she thought that she understood the significance of the rumor which had twice in a week come to her. Perhaps, as Tripp himself had said, she was getting nerves. Trevors himself was on the ranch right now.… Her two fists clinched. Yes, Trevors was here with triple purpose: To curry favor with Hampton against a possible need of it, to establish an alibi for himself, to witness Judith's discomfiture, when at six o'clock she must turn the men away with an excuse.