“Sure he did.” Pop spoke with emphasis, though somewhat thickly. “There ain’t nobody can tell Joe 15 Bloss much about cattle. He whirled in right capable and got things runnin’ good. For a while he was so danged busy he’d hardly ever get to town, but come winter the work eased up an’ I used to see him right frequent. He’d set there alongside the stove evenings an’ tell me what he was doin’, or how he’d jest had a letter from Stratton, who was by now in France, an’ all the rest of it. Wal, to make a long story short, a year last month the letters stopped comin’. Joe begun to get worried, but I told him likely Stratton was too busy fightin’ to write, or he might even of got wounded. Yuh could have knocked me down with a wisp uh bunch-grass when one uh the boys come in one night with a Phoenix paper, an’ showed me Stratton’s name on a list uh killed or missin’!”
“When was that?” asked Buck briefly, seeing that Daggett evidently expected some comment. If only the man would get on!
“’Round the middle of September. Joe was jest naturally shot to pieces, him knowin’ young Stratton from a kid an’ likin’ him fine, besides bein’ consid’able worried about what was goin’ to happen to the ranch an’ him. Still an’ all, there wasn’t nothin’ he could do but go on holdin’ down his job, which he done until the big bust along the end of October.”
He paused again expectantly. Buck ground the butt of his cigarette under one heel and reached for the makings. He had an almost irresistible desire 16 to take the garrulous old man by the shoulders and shake him till his teeth rattled.
“It was this here Thorne from Chicago,” resumed Daggett, a trifle disappointed. Usually at this point of the story, his listener broke in with exclamation or interested question. “He showed up one morning with the sheriff an’ claimed the ranch was his. Said Stratton had sold it to him an’ produced the deed, signed, sealed, an’ witnessed all right an’ proper.”
Match in one hand and cigarette in the other, Buck stared at him, the picture of arrested motion. For a moment or two his brain whirled. Could he possibly have done such a thing and not remember? With a ghastly sinking of his heart he realized that anything might have been possible during that hateful vanished year. Mechanically he lit his cigarette and of a sudden he grew calmer. According to the hospital records he had not left France until well into November of the preceding year. Tossing the match into the stove, he met Pop Daggett’s glance.
“How could that be?” he asked briefly. “Didn’t you say this Stratton was in France for months before he was killed?”
Pop nodded hearty agreement. “That’s jest what I said, an’ so did Bloss. But according to Thorne this here transfer was made a couple uh weeks before Stratton went over to France.” 17
“But that’s impossible!” exclaimed Buck hotly. “How could he have——”
He ceased abruptly and bit his lip. Daggett chuckled.