Thus reasoned Mr. Hennage. Both by nature and professional training he was more adept in the science of deduction than most men, and while he had never seen Donna's marriage license he firmly believed that she had been married. He had looked for the publication of the license in the Bakersfield papers. Not having seen it, Mr. Hennage was not disturbed. He understood that Donna, planning to keep on at the eating-house, desired her marriage to remain a secret for the present, and Bob had doubtless arranged to have the record of the issuance of the license “buried.” The fact that Friar Tuck had disappeared from the feed corral on the very night of Donna's return to San Pasqual was to Mr. Hennage prima facie evidence that Bob McGraw had returned with her. Donna had gone to the Hat Ranch while Bob had saddled and ridden north. At least, since he had come from the north, Mr. Hennage deduced that to the north he would return. Garlock lay a hard thirty-five miles from San Pasqual, and it seemed reasonable to presume that Bob had stopped there for water, rested until the stage came along and then robbed it.
However, there was one weak link in this apparently powerful chain of evidence. The stage driver and the express messenger both reported the bandit to be mounted on a bay mustang. At close quarters the horse had been, concealed behind the wall with the upper half of his face showing. Well, Bob McGraw's horse was a light roan—a very light roan, with almost bay ears and head, and at a distance, and in certain lights and in the excitement of the hold-up, he might very easily have been mistaken for a bay. Many a bay horse, when covered with alkali dust and dried sweat, has been mistaken for a roan.
In addition there was the evidence of the automatic pistol! Few men in that country carried automatics, for an automatic was a weapon too new in those days to be popular, and the residents of the Mojave still clung to tradition and a Colt's.45. The bandit had shown himself peculiarly expert in the use of his weapon, having shot the pipe out of the messenger's mouth, merely to impress that unimpressionable functionary. It would have been like Bob McGraw, who carried an automatic and was a dead shot, to show off a little!
However, an alibi might very easily discount all this circumstantial evidence, were it not for the fact that there could be no alibi for Bob McGraw, for beyond doubt he must have been in the neighborhood of Garlock that very day. Then there was the hat, with his name in it; also the report that one of the passengers who knew him had recognized the bandit as Bob McGraw.
“Alibi or no alibi, he'll get twenty years in San Quentin on that evidence” mourned Harley P. “Oh, Bob, you infernal young rip, if you was as hard up as all that, why didn't you come to me? Why didn't you trust old Harley P. Hennage with your worries! I'd 'a seen you through. But you wouldn't trust me—just went to work an' married that good girl, an' then pulled off a job o' road work to support her. Oh, Bob, you dog, you've broke her heart an' she'll go like her mother went.”
He clenched his big fists and punched the air viciously, in unconscious exemplification of the chastisement he would mete to Bob McGraw when he met him again.
“It ain't often I make a mistake judgin' a man” he muttered piteously, “but I've sure been taken in on this feller. I thought he'd stand the acid—by God! I thought he'd stand it. An' at that there's heaps o' good in the boy! He must 'a been just desperate for money, an' the notion to rob the stage come on him all in a heap an' downed him before he knew. Great Grief! That misfortunate girl! He'll never come back, an' if they trace him to her she'll die o' shame. Whiskered bob-cats, I never thought o' that. She'll have to get out too!”
The gambler had a sudden thought. Donna could do two things. She could leave San Pasqual, or she could stand pat! If she said nothing, not a soul could befoul her by linking her name to that of a stage-robber, She must stand pat! There was but one channel through which the news that Bob McGraw had been harbored at the Hat Ranch could possibly filter. People might think what they pleased, but they could never prove, provided Doc Taylor remained discreet. Therefore it behooved Mr. Hennage to see Doc Taylor immediately. That possible leak must be plugged at once.
Three minutes later the gambler strolled into the drugstore.
“How” he saluted.