Beyond the Law/Chapter 8

UT of the few scanty details which seemed to him to have any bearing upon the thing he sought to know, Dick Farley strove to piece together a chain of evidence which his brain could accept as pointing to the guilt or to the innocence of James Dalton. As he drew slowly away from the cabin and toward the cliffs which fell away to the lake, he arranged in mind these things in a sort of logical order:

1. There must have been some strong motive for the killing of his partner. If Dalton's knife driven by Dalton's powerful hand had caused Johnny Watson's death, what motive could have moved Dalton to the act?

This point he considered a long time. It was possible that these two men had known each other years before; that they had been enemies; that revenge had steeled the murderer's arm. But it did not seem probable. There was something a great deal more likely.

Could it not be that Dalton, although he denied the presence of gold in the valley, had stumbled upon the same streak which Johnny had found a month ago—the Cup of Gold? That he had discovered Johnny's tracks, had foreseen that he would return with pack-horses, and had killed him rather than that an outsider should come into his valley and steal "his" gold? But why, then, had he not killed johnny's partner as well?

2. The crime had been committed with a knife, unusually broad-bladed. Dalton wore such a knife.

3. Something had made Dalton tell his daughter upon the day of the murder that they were going to leave the Devil's Pocket and go back into the world. What was it? Did it have any bearing on the case? If not, it was one of those odd coincidences which occur sometimes, and Farley did not believe very much in coincidences.

4. The man who had committed the crime had stolen the two horses, and had hidden them somewhere in the mountains to the southwest of the valley. Dalton had gone away into these same mountains and had been gone five days. Why had he gone? He had not had time to reach any of the settlements; he had brought back no sugar, no cloth.

5. Dalton had lived many years in a seclusion which was very like hiding. He looked the part of a man who had never had a sick day in his life. He was not here because the doctors had sent him. He was a man of culture, a man who had traveled and seen much of the world. He loved his daughter. Why, then, had he suffered this long exile? Why had he made her endure it?

These matters rose above other considerations in Farley's mind. And in the end he saw no way of arriving at any kind of certainty until he had gone back to pick up the old trail; until he had found the horses: until he had seen if Dalton's tracks led to them and back from them to the cabin.

He stopped for a moment at the top of the cliffs and turned to look back at the cabin. He saw the girl standing there alone, her eyes following him; saw her hand go up swiftly as he turned to wave to her; remembered what she had done for him; saw again the clean heart and budding woman's soul which she had not thought of hiding, had not known how to hide from him. Lifting his hat to her, he hurried down the cliffs and out of sight.

"It would kill her, he muttered. And then, his eyes grown suddenly hard as he tried to shut her out of his mind: "Never mind, Johnny, old pardner. It's all in the cards, and we'll play it out. If he did it, he'll pay for it!"

But when night came to him in the edge of the mountains and he sat brooding over his camp-fire he could not drive her out of his wandering thoughts. He saw justice on one hand, and loyalty to one's partner; and on the other he saw the face of a girl who was going to be happy, or broken upon her first great sorrow—and it would be his act to decide her life for her. He bowed his head in his two hands, caught powerless in the irony of fate.

For a week Dick Farley sought, almost without rest to body and brain, to work out the puzzle which had been set before him. He had gone almost back to where he had buried Johnny Watson before he found the trail of the two stolen horses. This he had followed away from the valley through narrow cañons, over rocky passes, for two days.

As he had known from his partner's words, there was little water here. He thought more than once that he would be driven back to replenish the bottle he had carried with him. But the man who had driven the horses here had known the country; and following the trail, turning with it north or south of its general course, Farley found enough water in small springs and slender streams to keep the life in him and make his progress possible.

Fortunately the country was filled with small game, the quail, hare, grouse and squirrels having more curiosity than fear, coming close enough for him to kill with his revolvers what he required for food.

He came at last upon the two horses in a small, steep-walled valley set like a cup in the mountains. Here there was much rich, dry grass, and a narrow stream wandering through it. With little trouble he found the pack-saddle where it had been thrown into a clump of manzanitas. Remembering for the first time the map which Johnny had told him was hidden in a saddle-blanket, he found it readily. With a swift, cursory glance at it he put it into his pocket.

"To get the horses where they were left in the main trail," he muttered to himself, "to bring them here, then to go back to the lake would take a man just about five days—the time that Dalton was gone."

It was another point, a further link in the chain; but, like the other links, it was not strong enough to bear the burden of certainty. He must find other tracks—the tracks the man had made when he left the horses here. He must follow them. If they led straight back over the hills to the lake, he would know. And he had little doubt that he would find them, and that they would carry him once more to the Dalton cabin.

ND now came the slowest, the hardest of his work. To follow the trail left by two horses was comparatively simple. To track a man over these mountains, across hard ground and dry gully, was another matter.

It was certain that the man Dalton, or a possible other, had not gone back over the same trail. It was devious, turning aside for steep cañons which a horse could not climb but which a man could, full of many twists and turns. A man on foot would take a shorter way. And until he knew beyond a doubt that that man had been Virginia Dalton's father, he could not tell whether to look upon the eastern edge of the tiny valley for it, upon the western, northern or southern. But believing more and more that the trail would lead toward the east, he looked where he thought to find it.

And in an hour after finding the horses he picked up the other trail—the tracks made by the man who had brought them here. He saw the deep print of a boot-heel in the moist soil along the creek, found another track a few feet farther on, then another—all leading toward the east—toward Devil's Pocket.

A glance at the encircling hills showed him where the tracks must lead, where there was a little nature-made pass, leading over their crests which a man might follow; and he pushed ahead in that direction, positive that he would find the tracks there if there were any loose soil to keep them. He saw readily that he must leave the horses where they were for the present.

It took him another hour to climb up to the gap in the hills. The darkness was coming on, but there was light enough for him to see that the same heavy boots which had left their imprint in the soft dirt by the creek had passed here. He had done a long day's work; his side was paining him again, the night was very near. So he built his fire here and made his bed of fir-boughs.

In the first light of the dawn he breakfasted and moved on once more toward Devil's Pocket. Everywhere underfoot was a thick mat of pine-needles, upon which a man's foot would leave no sign. But the natural pass in which he had camped led straight on and into a cañon upon the other side of the little ridge; and where the soil had sifted down from the cañon sides to lie here and there among the rocks strewing the bottom of the ravine was the imprint of the heavy boots again. Only infrequently stopping to assure himself that he was not going wrong, he made what haste he could back toward the lake. And he had gone perhaps five miles before he came upon a discovery which caused him to stop, frowning, wondering.

He was in a small clearing, sandy-floored. The tracks were here, still leading east. But no longer was there the single trail. Here, plainly outlined, were the prints left by two men. They were side by side, alike fresh, a very few days old.

Farley had just come down a long rocky slope into the clearing, and did not know where the second man's path had met the first. There was little use in going back, in trying to find out. He sat down, filled his pipe and tried to make out the meaning of this new complication. Who was this second man? Where had he come from? Where was he going? Had he been with Dalton, or had he been trailing Dalton, or had Dalton been following him?

In the end he could not see that the new tracks made any great difference. If the trail he was following led on to the lake, to Dalton's cabin, the thing was clear enough.

Down the long slope of the mountainside from the clearing, into the rocky bed of the ravine, the only logical way for a man to follow, and out into a miniature valley below, he continued without looking for the tracks which he knew the hard, broken ground would not show had he looked.

It was two miles before he again found the boot-tracks in a bit of soft soil. And here again had one man, only one man, passed. The other, the second, had evidently turned aside across the rock-strewn side of the mountain—had gone on his way, prospecting.