Her own thoughts fled back a year and clung fearfully about the revolver with the pearl grip. She knew that the murder of his brother still remained a mystery and that people do not like mysteries to go long without solution. MacKelvey was sheriff, it was his duty, and it was his habit, to bring some man to book for every crime committed in the county. It was quite possible that the sheriff had been playing a waiting game throughout the year, and that he was waiting for this man to come back as he must do soon or late.
Meanwhile the man who was so vividly in Wanda's thoughts rode through the silent night with his cousin, drinking deep of the peace of the starlit night, finding an old familiar music in the hammering of his horse's hoofs on the grassy hills. Silent himself while thinking of other days and other rides, he did not notice how silent Garth was. They topped the rocky ridge which stood as boundary line between the two ranges, and swerved westward taking the long curve to the Crossing, welcomed back to the home outfit by the great booming voice of the distant river. Another mile and the river itself, flashing, turbulent molten silver, swollen with the wet winter in the mountains, swept shouting past them.
They turned upward along the river and raced wordlessly the greater part of the remaining half mile to the Bar L-M corrals. When they drew rein in the wide clearing in which stood range house, bunk house, stables and corrals, there was no spark of light about. They unsaddled swiftly, turned their horses loose with a resounding slap to send them out toward the little enclosed pasture, and went up to the range house. At the door of the men's quarters Wayne stopped.
"I think I'll drop in and say hello to the boys," he remarked, already at the door.
"Are you crazy?" cried Garth. "They've been asleep two hours, man. And they've got a big day's work ahead of them to-morrow."
"Oh, shut up, Garth," laughed Wayne good naturedly. "Don't you ever think of anything but work? Come ahead, and watch me bring 'em to life!"
He flung open the door and entered, Garth following in stony silence. It was dark within the long, narrow room, although the starlight gleamed feebly through the dirty window panes. Wayne found the lantern upon the nail where it had hung when he was a boy, lighted it, and turned the wick low so that there was only a wan light in the bunk house.
"Where's Big Bill's bunk?" he whispered to Garth.
Chuckling softly he drew near the bunk which Garth indicated against the wall at the far end of the room. He leaned forward, stooping low, peering into the shadows. Big Bill was fast asleep, his great, deep lungs expelling his breath regularly and mightily, his head with its touseled ink black hair half hidden by the hairy arm flung up over it. Wayne tiptoed away from the bunk, moved two chairs further back against the other wall, and still chuckling with vastly amused anticipation, again approached Big Bill's bedside.
He put out his hands slowly, gently, until they slipped into Big Bill's arm pits. Then, his laughter suddenly booming out he bunched his muscles and a black haired giant of a man in shirt and underdrawers was jerked floundering out of his bunk to the middle of the room.