Part 43

“I'm a patient man.” Bassett grinned. “I suppose you'll admit that one of you drove David Livingstone to the train, and that you had a fair idea then of where he was going?”

He looked directly at Jake, but Jake's face was a solid mask. He made no reply whatever.

From that moment on Bassett was certain that David had not been driven away from the ranch at all. What he did not know, and was in no way to find out, was whether the two ranch hands knew that he had gone into the mountains, or why. He surmised back of their taciturnity a small mystery of their own, and perhaps a fear. Possibly David's going was as much a puzzle to them as to him. Conceivably, during the hours together on the range, or during the winter snows, for ten years they had wrangled and argued over a disappearance as mysterious in its way as Judson Clark's.

He gave up at last, having learned certain unimportant facts: that the recluse had led a lonely life; that he had never tried to make the place more than carry itself; that he was a student, and that he had no other peculiarities.

“Did he ever say anything that would lead you to believe that he had any family, outside of his brother and sister? That is, any direct heir?” Bassett asked.

“He never talked about himself,” said Jake. “If that's all, Mr. Wasson, I've got a steer bogged down in the north pasture and I'll be going.”

On the Wassons' invitation he remained to lunch, and when the ranch owner excused himself and rode away after the meal he sat for some time on the verandah, with Mrs. Wasson sewing and his own eyes fixed speculatively on the mountain range, close, bleak and mysterious.

“Strange thing,” he commented. “Here's a man, a book-lover and student, who comes out here, not to make living and be a useful member of the community, but apparently to bury himself alive. I wonder, why.”

“A great many come out here to get away from something, Mr. Bassett.”

“Yes, to start again. But this man never started again. He apparently just quit.”

Mrs. Wasson put down her sewing and looked at him thoughtfully.

“Did the boys tell you anything about the young man who visited Henry Livingstone now and then?”

“No. They were not very communicative.”

“I suppose they wouldn't tell. Yet I don't see, unless--” She stopped, lost in some field of speculation where he could not follow her. “You know, we haven't much excitement here, and when this boy was first seen around the place--he was here mostly in the summer--we decided that he was a relative. I don't know why we considered him mysterious, unless it was because he was hardly ever seen. I don't even know that that was deliberate. For that matter Mr. Livingstone wasn't much more than a name to us.”

“You mean, a son?”

“Nobody knew. He was here only now and then.”

Bassett moved in his chair and looked at her.

“How old do you suppose this boy was?” he asked.

“He was here at different times. When Mr. Livingstone died I suppose he was in his twenties. The thing that makes it seem odd to me is that the men didn't mention him to you.”

“I didn't ask about him, of course.”

She went on with her sewing, apparently intending to drop the matter; but the reporter felt that now and then she was subjecting him to a sharp scrutiny, and that, in some shrewd woman-fashion, she was trying to place him.

“You said it was a matter of some property?”

“Yes.”

“But it's rather late, isn't it? Ten years?”

“That's what makes it difficult.”

There was another silence, during which she evidently made her decision.

“I have never said this before, except to Mr. Wasson. But I believe he was here when Henry Livingstone died.”

Her tone was mysterious, and Bassett stared at her.