“Someone pulled him out.”
“What’s it mean anyhow? Kate wasn’t in that hole, was she?”
Cass shook his head. “This is my guess. Someone was coming along here in the dark and fell in. Suppose Miss Cullison heard him calling as she came up the gulch. What would she do?”
“Come up and help the fellow out.”
“Sure she would. And if he was hungry—as he likely was—she would cook her quail for him.”
“And then? Why didn’t she come home?”
Luck turned a gray agonized face on him. “Boy, don’t you see? The man was Blackwell.”
“And if you’ll put yourself in Blackwell’s place you’ll see that he couldn’t let her go home to tell where she had seen him,” Fendrick explained.
“Then where is she? What did he do with her?”
There came a moment’s heavy silence. The pale face of the boy turned from the sheepman to his father. “You don’t think that—that——”