For now, in a flash, he saw and understood beyond the limits to which the girl's vision had gone, grasping explanations denied to her. She had told him everything which she knew or suspected, saying somewhere in her account, "I know now that my first judgment of you, before I was deceived into thinking Ben Broderick you, was right. I know that you are a man and a gentleman. I know that you are 'square.' So now, if you think that you owe me anything for what I am doing for you, I want you to remember that Henry Pollard is my uncle, my dead mother's brother, and to make things no harder for him than he has made them for himself."
With no other reference to her relation to the man, with no further hint of a plea for herself, she went on to tell what she knew of Pollard and Broderick, of their meetings with Dalton whom, she thought, they had completely deceived, of the talk she had overheard that night at the schoolhouse. She said nothing of her own precarious position at Pollard's house. When he finished reading Buck Thornton's eyes were very bright.
"A real woman," he muttered. "A real man's sort of girl! I doped her up right at the first jump, and then I went and insulted her by thinking that she was like 'Rattlesnake' Pollard! Lord, Lordy! What a difference!" And then, very gently, his eyes clouding a little, he muttered over and over, under his breath: "Poor little kid!"
But ever his thoughts came back to the tangle into which day by day he himself had been moving deeper and deeper. He saw how simple the whole matter had been, how seemingly sure of success. Broderick was close enough to him in size and form to make the scheme eminently practicable. It was easy for Broderick to dress himself as Thornton dressed, boots, chaps old and worn, big black hat and grey neck handkerchief. It was simple enough for Broderick, here in this land of cattle and horses, to find a horse that would be a fair match for any horse which Thornton rode. He would allow himself to be seen only at a distance, as upon the day Winifred Waverly had seen him, or indistinctly at night, and when the time came and the arrest was made there would rise up many men to swear to Buck Thornton…. Broderick himself had already said that he had been robbed of a can of gold dust. He would be ready to swear that Thornton had robbed him. Pollard would add his word….
One by one he remembered episodes which until now had meant nothing. Cattle had been stolen from the ranges all about him; no single cow was missing from the Poison Hole. He had thought that this had been because of his own great vigilance, his night-riding over his herds. But what would a jury say? He remembered that the last time he had seen old man King, just a few days ago, when King had remarked drily upon the fact that no cattle were missing from Thornton's range, there had been a swift look of suspicion in the old cattle man's shrewd eyes. Already he was suspected. How many men besides King were ready to believe the worst of Buck Thornton, a man who had been in their midst only a year?
There were many days in the life of Buck Thornton as in the lives of other cattle men hereabouts when he was absolutely alone with his horse, when he rode far out day and night upon some range errand, when, perhaps, he went two or three days together and saw no other man. Thornton remembered suddenly that when he had first heard of the murder of Bill Varney, the stage driver, he had just returned from such a lonely ride, a three days' trip into the mountains to look for new pasture lands. If these men planned to commit these crimes and then to throw the burden upon him, he saw how simple a matter it would be for them to select some such occasion as this when he could not prove an alibi.
"They've come mighty close to getting me," he muttered sternly. "Mighty damned uncomfortably close!"
He saw further. Winifred Waverly had said frankly that she had sworn to the sheriff that she knew it was Buck Thornton who had robbed her. They were managing to hold Cole Dalton off, and they had a reason. What? Perhaps to work their game as long as they dared, to make a last big haul, or to have their chain of evidence welded so strongly link by link that Thornton could not free himself from it and that no faintest breath of suspicion might reach them. Pollard would be in a position to prove that Thornton had paid him this five thousand only to take it back; it would give him a chance to break the contract, to regain possession of the Poison Hole and to keep the other ten thousand dollars already paid in as forfeited….
Why had they chosen him to bear the brunt of their manifold crimes? That, too, was clear to him. With him in the penitentiary or gone to the gallows the whole episode would be closed, the men who had put through the monumental scheme would be in a position to enjoy their boldly acquired profits with no fear of the law so much as searching for them. It was necessary to them that some man suffer for their wrong doing. Now: why Buck Thornton in particular? The reasons were forthcoming, logical and in order: he was a man whom Pollard hated; already Pollard regretted having sold the Poison Hole ranch for twenty thousand dollars; he wanted it back; Thornton happened to be a new man in the country and new men are always open to suspicion; he happened to be close enough to Ben Broderick in size and form and carriage to make the deception easy. And, thought Thornton, there was one other reason:
The undertaking of these men had already grown too big, the work too extensive, for it to be handled by two men alone. They had confederates; that was inevitable. Blackie, the saloon keeper in Dry Town, was one of them, he felt sure. The Bedloe boys, always ready for deeds of wildness and lawlessness, were others. The Bedloe boys hated him as keenly as did Pollard, and they were not the kind to miss an opportunity like this to "break even" with him. It was noteworthy that he had had no trouble with them since he had shot the Kid's revolvers out of his hands at John Smith's place last winter; they had left him entirely unmolested; the three of them who he knew were fearless and hard and vengeful, had not sought in any way to punish him. Here was the reason.