"You're dead right there, youngster," agreed Dakota vehemently.
August was hastening to its end. Stamford, in a panic, began to realise how little he had accomplished. He was oppressed with the depth of his inexperience, and at moments considered seriously the wisdom of handing over to the Police all the information he had collected and getting back to his paper. Though, the longer he remained, the more he was impressed with the mysterious undercurrent at the H-Lazy Z, he had arrived no nearer the solution of the murder of Corporal Faircloth. His tentative ventures to direct the conversation to informative channels, whether with the cowboys or with Cockney, were blocked by sullen silences or suspicious glances; and it spurred him on in his most discouraged moments, though it told him nothing of value. He knew he was in the right place, but he was growing less confident that he was the right man.
One day, having wandered far up the bank of the river with fishing tackle in hand but a keener intentness on the opposite cliffs where he knew Isabel Bulkeley was working with her brother, he saw, far to the south-west, a galloping Policeman. He mentioned it at the dinner table. Cockney bit off an oath in time and expended his fury on his meat. Professor Bulkeley did not seem to hear, expressing a regret that he had been denied an opportunity of meeting "these fearless and sparkling guardians of the law."
Cockney gave an audible sneer.
"You don't admire them, Mr. Aikens?"
"I hate them," Cockney exploded. "If I saw them driven into a corral and shot out of hand——"
"Jim, dear," Mary broke in gently.
His anger directed itself against her. "Yes, you've been swallowing the dope, like everyone else. You women! You can't resist the glamour of them. But, for Heaven's sake, keep it from me in my own house! I won't have it!"
He was almost shouting at the last, the very unreasonableness of his outburst increasing his anger. Mary sat cowering a little before it, and Professor Bulkeley rose abruptly and disappeared upstairs. Cockney's eyes followed him in a sudden silence, then he, too, got up and stumbled out.
Mary Aikens, returning in the early darkness that night from a mad gallop on the prairie, brought with her a bundle of papers handed her by a rider from the Double Bar-O. From copies of the Journal Stamford learned that the cattle-thieving was becoming bolder. Evidently Smith was doing good work on the paper, and the advertising was holding its own.