Bill was staring at the paper.
“Why that’s—that’s an order for—liquor from O’Brien,” he said, with the air of having made a discovery.
His brilliancy passed the girl by. She merely nodded.
“How—how did it get there?” she ejaculated.
“Why, some one must have thrown it there,” Bill declared deliberately.
Again the man’s shrewdness lacked an appreciative audience. The girl made no answer. She was thinking. She moved aside and leaned against the rough trunk of the mighty pine. She was still staring at the paper.
But her movement caught the man’s attention, and the sudden realization of the proximity of the pine recalled many things to his mind. The pine. That was where he had seen Charlie, his first night in the valley. That was where the police were watching him. That was where he vanished. It was at the pine that O’Brien had warned him Charlie had gone to collect “greenbacks”—dollars. That was O’Brien’s order, money enclosed. Charlie had found the order and money. Then, when he was interrupted by his, Bill’s, shout he had thrown the order away.
The realization was like a douche of cold water, in spite of all he had seen and knew. Then he did a thing he hardly understood the reason of. It was the result of impulse—a sort of sub-conscious impulse. He reached out and took the weather-stained paper from the girl’s yielding hands and deliberately tore it up.
“Why—why are you doing that?” Helen asked sharply.
Bill forced himself to a smile, and shrugged his shoulders.