CHAPTER IX—EVIDENCE TO CONVICT
Meanwhile, Lex Sangerly met the two railroad detectives and, after a short conference in the hotel office, the three motored out to the Huntington ranch. It was around four o’clock when they admitted themselves into the house with the key Lemuel had placed under the doormat. The sleuths, Ray Coates and Harry Tyler—former plain-clothes men of the Los Angeles police department—began an exhaustive investigation of the grounds and outhouses. They found the tracks of Billy Gee approaching the ranch from across the plains and even traced the outlaw’s progress into the dwelling. It required painstaking effort to do this last, and the continued use of a magnifying glass by which they followed the disconnected, faint trail of blood specks, from the spot where Dot had dragged the wounded bandit out of the saddle until she finally got him indoors. These two Mohave & Southwestern bloodhounds also established the incriminating fact that Billy Gee had occupied the parlor lounge. To them, it was a cinch case, circumstantial evidence pointing conclusively to the outlaw having received aid either from Lemuel or his daughter.
As for Lex, he had lingered inside. He had made two discoveries, both impressive ones. Wandering into Huntington’s room, he had come upon a photograph of a girl. It was standing on the bureau—a photograph of Dot taken a year before in Geerusalem and showing her in the first full bloom of charming womanhood. He picked up the picture and looked at it for a long time. It engrossed him in an odd way, for he was struck by the freshness and sensitiveness of the face, by the wholesome, gentle expression in the great eyes, withal, by that indefinable charm that attaches only to things of desert life, be they a humble wild flower, a mocking bird’s nest in a cactus, or a daughter of the range.
Curiosity led him at last to steal a glance into the room this remarkably pretty girl occupied. He entered it rather hesitatingly and surveyed its interior. It was a clean little room, plainly furnished, but there were artistic touches of color here and there that gave it a peculiar cheer and warmth, and in a frame against the wall was a picture of Mrs. Agatha Liggs! The sight of that picture pleased him. It did more. The longer he gazed at it, the greater became that pleasure and, though he did not pause to ascertain the cause, he felt himself grow kindly inclined toward this stranger girl, as if, in some unknown way, he already knew her.
Presently he made his second discovery. Inspecting the scarcely visible, bloody finger prints of a man on the window sill, he straightway satisfied himself that their owner had climbed out of Dot’s room through the window. Further investigation of the soft soil of the garden beneath that window revealed not only a man’s tracks, but a woman’s, the latter’s showing that she had both left and reëntered the house by the same route.
For some moments Lex stood and thought gravely over this new angle in the case. There was no blinking the fact that Billy Gee had been befriended and that his benefactor was quite obviously Dot Huntington. It seemed incredible, judging from the high praise Mrs. Liggs had accorded the girl—and he knew Mrs. Liggs’ stanch regard for the truth.
Yet here was irrefutable proof pointing to a wounded man escaping from the house, assisted by a woman, who—it was a natural deduction in the circumstances—after she had seen him safely away, returned to her room by a route plainly intended to conceal her actions; and the only apparent reason for secrecy, as far as he could see, appeared to be fear of discovery by some one in the house, that some one being Lemuel Huntington. Granting this were true, it was more than probable that a love affair existed between this notorious desperado and the rancher’s daughter, of which her father was ignorant; for, Lex argued, no girl, unless she were deeply interested in him, would be so indiscreet as to clamber through a window, out of her own bedroom, with a man, shot and bleeding, a man, whose presence in the house she dared not reveal to her father.
The footsteps of the two detectives on the back porch, disturbed his train of thought. Presently he heard the pair tramping about the kitchen. A few moments later, Coates—a hard-eyed, poker-faced individual, never without a cigar in his mouth—threw open the door and walked in.
“We found the saddlebags, saddle and bridle, Mr. Sangerly. They’re smeared over with blood. Somebody hid ’em pretty carefully,” he announced, with a cocksure jerk of his head.
“Where?”