That talk set going in the sheriff’s mind a train of thought which was recurrent with him, which was forever travelling with him somewhere in his consciousness. Sometimes one thing set it going, sometimes another. In the two years already passed of his term of office it had been a matter of deep annoyance to him that he had not been able to put his hands on the mysterious rustlers who from time to time got away with stock up and down Nameless River.
This unseen, baleful agency was baffling as smoke.
It struck here—and there—with a decisive clean stroke like the head of a killing hawk, and there was nothing to show the how and wherefore. Cattle disappeared from the range with a smooth magic which was maddening. They left no trace, nothing. It seemed ridiculous that ninety head of steers could be driven out of the country leaving no trail, but such had been the case.
Selwood himself, with a picked posse, had trailed them into the river, and there they must have taken to themselves wings, for they had apparently never come out. To be sure Kate Cathrew was driving out her fall beef at the time, and the trampling band had crossed the river a bit below where the ninety head had entered the stream. That trampled crossing was the only spot for miles each way where a cattle-brute could have left the water, for Selwood searched every foot with eagle eyes. The coincidence of time stayed with the sheriff doggedly, even though the Cathrew cattle, honestly branded, went boldly through Cordova and down the Strip, as the narrow valley beside Nameless was called, and thence out to the railroad, three long days’ drive away.
And the smaller thefts—old man Conlan’s bunch, and those of Jermyn—all lifted light as a feather. These had left not even a hoof-mark. It was smooth stuff—and it galled the sheriff, was a secret source of humiliation. He had heard a good many remarks about his own inaction, though nearly all of the ranchers in the country were his friends.
But deep inside himself he laid a spiritual finger on the handsome, frowning-eyed woman at Sky Line and held it there.
Sooner or later, he told himself, as he had told McKane, the steady rays of his searching glass would reveal in her the thing he knew was there.
This was not logic, it was instinct—a poor thing for a sheriff to base his actions on, apparently, but Price Selwood based his thereon in unwavering confidence.
And if he could have looked into the living-room at Sky Line that day he would have jotted in his mental note-book as correct, one premise—for the mistress sat again at her dark wood desk and read a letter, and her face was well worth watching.
The letter bore a New York postmark, and its terms were sharp and decisive, almost legal, leaving no doubt of their meaning.