A bleak, gray dawn was slowly breaking over the scene of black desolation when the two men arrived at a small-mouthed cavern in the side of the Big Blackfern. The elder of the pair squeezed himself through the rocky opening with some difficulty. The other placed a great flat stone over the hole, and almost ran back to the new house to tell his mother and the Masons and Tot Singleton good-by; he meant to start for the far-away Northwest immediately.
Whitney Fair met him at the gate. Fair had discovered that every man of the escaped Wolfes had disappeared; he was purple in the face, and his small, pale-blue eyes glittered like those of an angry animal.
He seized one of the lapels of Wolfe's coat and cried savagely, "You'll pay for this! You warned them, and that makes you as guilty as they are—give me the money you took from the safe!"
"I didn't take any money from the safe," Wolfe replied with a level calmness that surprised even himself.
"You did!"
"Be careful, Mr. Fair!"
Whitney Fair went ashen instead of purple. "And there are some other things against you, too," he fumed. "You had an agreement by which you were to have this land for a pittance an acre when the sawing was done; you drew your salary for—er, more than a year in advance. Oh, but I'll have the net around you good and hard before you know what's happened! Hand that money right back, you thief!"
There was a quick step behind him. Colonel Mason, tall, patrician, and now white, caught his arm.
"Let him go, sir!" the colonel ordered hotly. "He is no thief—and anybody that says he is, sir, lies outright!"
Fair sniffed like a disgusted hound. "Meaning that I have lied outright, Colonel?"