That was all, but certainly a strange puzzle for a Navajo squaw to set her.
She turned the paper over, to find the other side close-packed with writing.
Miss Lee:
In the last cabin but one is a prisoner, your friend Sheriff Flatray. He is to be shot in an hour. I have offered any sum for his life and been refused. For God’s sake save him somehow.
Simon West.
Jack Flatray here, and about to be murdered! The thing was incredible. And yet—and yet—— Was it so impossible, after all? Some one had broken into the Cache and released the prisoners. Who more likely than Jack to have done this? And later they had captured him and condemned him for what he had done.
Melissy reconstructed the scene in a flash. The Indian squaw was West. He had been rigged up in that paraphernalia to deceive any chance mountaineer who might drop into the valley by accident.
No doubt, when he first saw Melissy, the railroad magnate had been passing his time in making notes about his plans for the system he controlled. But when he had caught sight of her, he had written the note, under the very eyes of the guard, had torn the envelope as if it were of no importance, and 289 tossed the pieces away. He had taken the thousandth chance that his note might fall into the hands of the person to whom it was directed.
All this she understood without giving it conscious thought. For her whole mind was filled with the horror of what she had learned. Jack Flatray, the man she loved, was to be killed. He was to be shot down in an hour.