Page:Son of the wind.djvu/176

RV 162 "There has got to be a string to it," he answered, looking at his foreman's writing on the envelope. There was no mistaking that wild, irregular succession of angles and loops. "Pardon me, Mrs. Rader. I am blocking the doorway and I see you want to lock up."

He moved back, and the girl moved back perforce. Her mother gave him a grateful look, but it was not Mrs. Rader's gratitude he was seeking, but the quickest way out of the room. He made his excuses, aware that they must seem abrupt; but a premonition was upon him, sharper than ever, that he had been wasting time, and that from this moment on it would be scant for him. He stopped in the hall, where a lamp had been set high in a bracket, and held the sheet of paper up.

It was dated two days back. The stuff had been sent that day, Morgan wrote, and "Esmeralda Charley" was going down by the morning train to Beckwith to await orders. He hoped the horse was the one Carron thought it was or it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Just as Morgan had said all along the brown stallion of the new bunch had a blind eye, and was dead financial loss; and that half-breed "Buster" whom Carron had thought so fine, had killed the two best mares—entirely unnecessary—and would Carron discharge him by wire, as he