The sorting done, the boy arose noiselessly and closed the lid of the chest. Then, turning, he looked down on the head of the sleeper. For the first time he noticed that Weston’s hair, thick and unkempt, was dull in color and had a dead look at variance with its evident health. Tiptoeing across the floor he bent over the recumbent man and gently raising a lock of his hair looked wonderingly at the roots. The sight caused him to utter an exclamation which disturbed the sleeper. He straightened himself and stepped back precipitately.
The hair was tow-colored at the roots.
CHAPTER IV
THE FOURTH MAN
Ross stood motionless until Weston, muttering and turning his head from side to side, gradually came to rest again and fell into a deeper sleep. Then the boy went outside and sat down on the bench.
"It’s easy enough to put two and two together," he muttered.
Leaning forward, he dropped his elbows on his knees and taking his head between his hands, proceeded to do some adding satisfactory in its results. He longed for the presence of Sheepy. Now he would question him with interest on the subject of the puncher whose face was free from a beard and whose hair was tow color. He wanted more information on the subject of that cattle round-up and of the process of getting those three guilty cow punchers. Still, he believed that Sheepy had told him enough to make it clear that Weston was the fourth that old man Quinn was after.
"Some one that looked like Weston and rode like him," Ross enumerated the points in the evidence, "only the man in Oklahoma had no beard and his hair was tow color."
What was easier than to grow a beard–the hair was already accounted for–it had been tow-colored before its owner stained it a chestnut brown. And why should he have colored it unless for purposes of disguise? And why a disguise unless he was guilty of a crime such as driving old man Quinn’s sheep into the North Fork?
At this point in his reasoning, another fact flashed into the boy’s mind–the strange way in which Weston had acted about his name.