In a few minutes he and Bean reappeared on the ledge, Dakota arguing violently, Bean sullen. Dakota started angrily down the steps, but Bean stood a moment on the ledge, looking thoughtfully across the river at the very spot where Stamford was lying. Then he, too, dropped to the valley.
Dakota was striding down toward the river. As he crossed one of the little streams that bubbled from the falls in the cliff he stopped abruptly and bent over the ground. An excited gesticulation brought his companions on the run, and together they stooped over Dakota's discovery. The Professor had crossed the streams there, Stamford remembered, and the ground would be soft. Hastily scattering, the cowboys searched the valley.
It was long before Alkali, poking about close to the river, came on a second track, and they clustered about it, gesticulating, excited, voluble. Stamford leaned far from his hiding-place in his excitement, and Muck Norsley, wheeling suddenly, examined the cliff all about him. But the distance was too great, the muddle of broken rock too confusing; and Stamford scarcely breathed during the scrutiny. When it was over he sank to cover, and perspiration broke out over him.
Dakota and his friends continued their search up the eastern slope from the valley, pausing now and then as if over further disturbing evidence. They climbed upward to the great rock on which Cockney and the Professor had stood, mounting from below by means of a rope. For a time they worked about its base, then it rolled back and the upward path was clear.
As the horses toiled up the steep ascent, Stamford noticed that a rifle hung from every saddle. When they had passed, the rock rolled back again, shutting in the valley, and only the cattle in the corral and the dogs remained.
Stamford commenced his rough trail back down the river, always keeping to cover. Only two definite ideas were in his mind: to escape notice, and to reach the Bulkeleys to borrow their team for the journey to the Double Bar-O. His work at the H-Lazy Z was ended—and it was a failure. Almost he could find it in him to regret that he had lost his temper with Cockney.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FIGHT IN THE RANCH-HOUSE
Mary Aikens, alone at the ranch-house, went about her morning work with fumbling hands and tired brain. The shadow of impending crisis was over her though she recognised only the thickening of a cloud of doubt, suspicion, and fear that had been closing in on her for more than a year. To her it was conviction enough of Jim's share in the mysteries she was struggling single handed to unravel, that he refused to take her into his confidence.
The last act of her morning duties was always a visit to the Bulkeleys' rooms. Isabel had refused to leave to her any of the care of their rooms, but Mary Aikens, as hostess, never omitted that morning visit to see that nothing was lacking for their comfort—perhaps, too, to dream a little over the wonderful thing that had happened that summer to the H-Lazy Z, the lonely ranch where never before in her time had another woman set foot. In Isabel's kindly eyes and sympathetic silences she read what one woman can tell another without the perils of speech. The Professor? There she always stopped short. The only indulgence she permitted her thoughts was that the Professor needed most a strong and understanding wife, indulgent—a little—but very firm at times. He was a spoiled child she longed to mother.