Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/63

 "I owe your mother too much already to permit you to run your head into a danger like that," Nearing said, regaining hold of himself by a great effort, his voice shaken, the sound of it unnatural and dry.

"It just occurred to me to make the suggestion, I wouldn't want to put my foot into something I might make worse," Barrett said, his thoughts leaping and scurrying like a dog that has dropped the scent.

"That's it, that's the very point," Nearing was regaining his poise with every word, "it's strangers they suspect. I can do more, I am doing more. I'm on track of something right now, big developments are due to break any hour. A slip, a new suspicion—don't you see how it would be?"

"Naturally, being on the ground, you"

"Certainly. Then I owe it to your mother to keep you out of a thing that could have only one ending for you. Sit down; don't let this detective folly run away with you. You don't know these wolves of the range, Ed. You could no more track down evidence that would nail one of them than you could scale the heavens!"

"I don't suppose I could," said Barrett resuming his chair.

He was disturbed by a strange, shaken feeling, as if he had escaped some great peril which had developed in a moment where no danger was dreamed to lurk, It was as if a gun had burst on the deck of his ship, scattering woe and desolation.

"No, it would be like settin' a puppy dog to run down a mountain lion," Nearing said, but with such seriousness that the comparison carried no offense.