Just keep the hands
to run it. The lady had better go into Forks if she has any friends
there. You might see to that. I understand that you are--gossip, you
know."

"Yes."

"There'll be inquiries and formalities. The property I don't know
about. That will be settled by the government."

Tresler became thoughtful. Suddenly he turned to his companion.

"Sheriff," he said earnestly, "I hope you'll spare Miss Marbolt all
you can. She has lived a terribly unhappy life with him. I can assure
you she has known nothing of this--nothing of the strange blindness. I
would swear it with my last breath."

"I don't doubt you, my boy," the other said heartily. "We owe you too
much to doubt you. She shall not be bothered more than can be helped.
But she had some knowledge of that blindness, or she would not have
acted as she did with that lamp. I tell you candidly she will have to
make a statement."

"Have no doubt; she will explain."

"Sure--ah! I think I hear the wheels of the wagon." Fyles looked
round. Then he settled himself down again. "Jake," he went on, "was
smartest of us all. I can't believe he was ever told of his patron's
curious blindness. He must have discovered it. He was playing a big
game. And all for a woman! Well, well."

"No doubt he thought she was worth it," said Tresler, with some
asperity.

The officer smiled at the tone. "No doubt, no doubt. Still, he wasn't
young. He fooled you when he concurred with your suspicions of
Anton--that is, he knew you were off the true scent, and meant keeping
you off it. I can understand, too, why you were sent to Willow Bluff.
You knew too much, you were too inquiring. Besides, from your own
showing to Jake--which he carried on to the blind man for his own
ends--you wanted too much. You had to be got rid of, as others have
been got rid of before. Yes, it was all very clever. And he never
spared his own stock. Robbed himself by transferring a bunch of
steers to these corrals, and, later on, I suppose, letting them drift
back to his own pastures. I only wonder why, with a ranch like his, he
ran the risk."

"Perhaps it was old-time associations. He was a slave-trader once, and
no doubt he stocked his ranch originally by raiding the Indians'
cattle. Then, when white people came around, and the Indians
disappeared, he continued his depredations on less open lines."

"Ah! slave-trader, was he? Who said?"

"Miss Marbolt innocently told me he once traded in the Indies in