“I'm a patient man.” Bassett grinned. “I suppose you'll admit that one of you drove David Livingstone to the train, and that you had a fair idea then of where he was going?”
He looked directly at Jake, but Jake's face was a solid mask. He made no reply whatever.
From that moment on Bassett was certain that David had not been driven away from the ranch at all. What he did not know, and was in no way to find out, was whether the two ranch hands knew that he had gone into the mountains, or why. He surmised back of their taciturnity a small mystery of their own, and perhaps a fear. Possibly David's going was as much a puzzle to them as to him. Conceivably, during the hours together on the range, or during the winter snows, for ten years they had wrangled and argued over a disappearance as mysterious in its way as Judson Clark's.
He gave up at last, having learned certain unimportant facts: that the recluse had led a lonely life; that he had never tried to make the place more than carry itself; that he was a student, and that he had no other peculiarities.
“Did he ever say anything that would lead you to believe that he had any family, outside of his brother and sister? That is, any direct heir?” Bassett asked.
“He never talked about himself,” said Jake. “If that's all, Mr. Wasson, I've got a steer bogged down in the north pasture and I'll be going.”
On the Wassons' invitation he remained to lunch, and when the ranch owner excused himself and rode away after the meal he sat for some time on the verandah, with Mrs. Wasson sewing and his own eyes fixed speculatively on the mountain range, close, bleak and mysterious.
“Strange thing,” he commented. “Here's a man, a book-lover and student, who comes out here, not to make living and be a useful member of the community, but apparently to bury himself alive. I wonder, why.”
“A great many come out here to get away from something, Mr. Bassett.”
“Yes, to start again. But this man never started again. He apparently just quit.”