The coroner's inquest detained Bob over until the week following. In it Amy's testimony as to the gun-man's appearance and evident intention was quite sufficient to excuse Ware's shooting; and the fact that Oldham, as he was still known, instead of Saleratus Bill, received the bullet was evidently sheer unavoidable accident. Bob's testimony added little save corroboration. As soon as he could get away, he took the road to Fremont.
Orde was awaiting his son at the station. Bob saw the straight, heavy figure, the tanned face with the snow-white moustache, before the train had come to a stop. Full of eagerness, he waved his hat over the head of the outraged porter barricaded on the lower steps by his customary accumulation of suit cases.
"Hullo, dad! Hullo, there!" he shouted again and again, quite oblivious to the amusement of the other passengers over this tall and bronzed young man's enthusiasm.
Orde caught sight of his son at last; his face lit up, and he, too, swung his hat. A moment later they had clasped hands.
After the first greetings, Bob gave his suit case in charge to the hotel bus-man.
"We'll take a little walk up the street and talk things over," he suggested.
They sauntered slowly up the hill and down the side streets beneath the pepper and acacia trees of Fremont's beautiful thoroughfares. So absorbed did they become that they did not realize in the slightest where they were going, so that at last they had topped the ridge and, from the stretch of the Sunrise Drive, they looked over into the cañon.
"So you've been getting into trouble, have you?" chaffed Orde, as they left the station.
"I don't know about that," Bob rejoined. "I do know that there are quite a number of people in trouble."
Orde laughed.