The man shrugged. “Take possession of the ranch. Just keep the hands to run it. The lady had better go into Forks if she has any friends there. You might see to that. I understand that you are—gossip, you know.”
“Yes.”
“There’ll be inquiries and formalities. The property I don’t know about. That will be settled by the government.”
Tresler became thoughtful. Suddenly he turned to his companion.
“Sheriff,” he said earnestly, “I hope you’ll spare Miss Marbolt all you can. She has lived a terribly unhappy life with him. I can assure you she has known nothing of this—nothing of the strange blindness. I would swear it with my last breath.”
“I don’t doubt you, my boy,” the other said heartily. “We owe you too much to doubt you. She shall not be bothered more than can be helped. But she had some knowledge of that blindness, or she would not have acted as she did with that lamp. I tell you candidly she will have to make a statement.”
“Have no doubt; she will explain.”
“Sure—ah! I think I hear the wheels of the wagon.” Fyles looked round. Then he settled himself down again. “Jake,” he went on, “was smartest of us all. I can’t believe he was ever told of his patron’s curious blindness. He must have discovered it. He was playing a big game. And all for a woman! Well, well.”
“No doubt he thought she was worth it,” said Tresler, with some asperity.
The officer smiled at the tone. “No doubt, no doubt. Still, he wasn’t young. He fooled you when he concurred with your suspicions of Anton—that is, he knew you were off the true scent, and meant keeping you off it. I can understand, too, why you were sent to Willow Bluff. You knew too much, you were too inquiring. Besides, from your own showing to Jake—which he carried on to the blind man for his own ends—you wanted too much. You had to be got rid of, as others have been got rid of before. Yes, it was all very clever. And he never spared his own stock. Robbed himself by transferring a bunch of steers to these corrals, and, later on, I suppose, letting them drift back to his own pastures. I only wonder why, with a ranch like his, he ran the risk.”