Of course, he may have fallen--Bill and Jake were away.
They'd driven some cattle out on the range. It was two days before he
was found, and it would have been longer if Mr. Wasson hadn't ridden out
to talk to him about buying. He found him dead in his bed, but there was
blood on the floor in the next room. I washed it up myself."

"Of course," she added, when Bassett maintained a puzzled silence, "I
may be all wrong. He might have fallen in the next room and dragged
himself to bed. But he was very neatly covered up."

"It's your idea, then, that this boy put him into the bed?"

"I don't know. He wasn't seen about the place. He's never been here
since. But the posse found a horse with the Livingstone brand, saddled,
dead in Dry River Canyon when it was looking for Judson Clark. Of
course, that was a month later. The men here, Bill and Jake, claimed it
had wandered off, but I've often wondered."

After a time Bassett got up and took his leave. He was confused and
irritated. Here, whether creditably or not, was Dick Livingstone
accounted for. There was a story there, probably, but not the story he
was after. This unknown had been at the ranch when Henry Livingstone
died, had perhaps been indirectly responsible for his death. He had,
witness the horse, fled after the thing happened. Later on, then, David
Livingstone had taken him into his family. That was all.

Except for that identification of Gregory's, and for the photograph of
Judson Clark.... For a moment he wondered if the two, Jud Clark and the
unknown, could be the same. But Dry River would have known Clark. That
couldn't be.

He almost ditched the car on his way back to Norada, so deeply was he
engrossed in thought.

XX

On the seventh of June David and Lucy went to the seashore, went by
the order of various professional gentlemen who had differed violently
during the course of David's illness, but who now suddenly agreed with
an almost startling unanimity. Which unanimity was the result of careful
coaching by Dick.

He saw in David's absence his only possible chance to go back to Norada
without worry to the sick man, and he felt, too, that a change, getting
away from the surcharged atmosphere of the old house, would be good for
both David and Lucy.

For days before they started Lucy went about in a frenzy of nervous
energy, writing out menus for Minnie for a month ahead, counting and
recounting David's collars and handkerchiefs, cleaning and pr