“That’s when he recognised you.”
The man laughed outright.
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“Of course it was.” In spite of her anxiety Blanche was forced to smile. “Your silver thatch, as Molly calls it, wouldn’t save you. It wouldn’t save you if you were all covered up with the flowing beard of a patriarch. No one who’s ever seen the grin on your foolish old face is ever going to mistake it again. And you think he’d been up around Dan’s place? You guess he was a patrol? In plain clothes? And he was the result of Hartspool and Calford being worried?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t sound good to me. I don’t know much of the ways of the Police, but why would he be out of uniform? And why would they send the particular boy who lost you? And, anyway, why worry with Dan if there’s been no cattle stealing going on around the hills? What could his place tell them?”
“Dan’s place could tell them a deal,” Jim protested at once. “You’ve got to see with their eyes. Dan’s been known to be living a trapper life years. Suddenly he registers a brand. Then he starts in to trade stock big. He and I have talked this out. We’ve foreseen it. That’s why we’ve started his building.”
Again Blanche shook her head.
“You haven’t answered a thing,” she declared keenly. “You’ve got Dan’s work on your mind. Look around outside it. The thing I’m looking at is the identity of that boy. Being the boy you got away from, I’d say he’s more—a deal more—interested in—you. I’d say if he was looking for anything, he found it when he found you. Remember, you didn’t find him up around Dan’s. You found him at the start of our highway. Isn’t that so? Has he discovered that highway, and is wondering who uses it? Eh?” Again came the woman’s shake of the head. “The notion of Dan’s place leaves me cold. There’s no cattle stealing going on, no one to pass a complaint. Molly Marton is his nearest neighbour, twenty-five miles away. She’s lost nothing. After her, another ten miles nearer Hartspool, comes that boy Andy, the new settler who took her into that dance. No, Jim, he was looking for you. And he’s found you.”
Jim removed his pipe from his mouth.
“This boy Andy?” he said inquiringly. “Andy—who? It’s Irish, isn’t it?”
Blanche laughed. She thought she recognised asperity in the man’s tone, and interpreted it in her woman’s fashion.