She abruptly held out her hand and Stanley Fyles took it. Her good-bye came with a curtness that might well have inspired consternation. But the policeman replied to it without any such feeling, and passed on with his faithful Peter trailing leisurely behind him.
CHAPTER XIX
BILL MAKES THREE DISCOVERIES
It was Big Brother Bill’s third morning in the valley of Leaping Creek, and in that brief time his optimism and enthusiasm for the affairs of life in general had suffered shocks from which, at the moment, recovery seemed altogether doubtful.
Like all simple natures, once mental disquiet set in it was not easily shaken off. So, about nine o’clock in the morning, he found himself sitting on the sill of the barn doorway, his broad back propped against the casing, hugging his troubles to himself, and, incidentally, smoking like a miniature smoke-stack.
The place was quite still under the blazing morning sun; a collar-chain rattled inside the barn where a few horses stood impatiently swishing off the attacks of troublesome flies with their long tails; a hen, somewhere nearby, clucked to her brood of wandering chicks; an occasional grunt, and curious snuffing, came from the regions of the dilapidated hog pen. These were the only signs of life about the place. For Charlie, after displaying an unusual taciturnity, had taken himself off for the day, upon work which he had declared to be imperative, and Kid Blaney, after feeding and watering his horses, had done the same thing, on a similar excuse.
Now, Bill felt he must do one of those very big “thinks,” which, on occasion, he had been known to achieve. He felt that the time had come when something must really be done to ease the pressure upon his mental endurance.
The previous night had furnished the climax, a painful climax, to all he had learned of his brother’s doings, of his brother’s guilt. Yes, he no longer shrank from using that hideous word. All suspected Charlie, the police, everybody, except Kate Seton, and Charlie had practically admitted his guilt to him personally, without any apparent shame or regret. But since then, since Bill had listened to the loyal defense of Kate, he had seen for himself the smugglers and their chief at work upon their nefarious trade, and thus further proof was no longer necessary.
All mystery was banished. The whole thing, in spite of Kate’s denial, was as plain as daylight. Charlie was a whisky-runner. The head of the gang. His little “one-eyed” ranch was the merest blind. His prosperity, if prosperity he possessed at all, was the prosperity of successful defiance of the law. To the simple brother this realization was a terrible one. Charlie, the brother to whom he had always been so devoted, was a crook, a mere common crook.