"Your father was a gr-reat man, the gamest officer that ever the Big Creek country saw. Me name is Patrick Ryan."
"Glad to meet any friend of my father, Mr. Ryan." Roy Beaudry offered his hand. His fine eyes glowed.
"Wait," warned the little cowpuncher grimly. "I'm no liar, whativer else I've been. Mebbe you'll be glad you've met me—an' mebbe you won't. First off, I was no friend of your father. I trailed with the Rutherford outfit them days. It's all long past and I'll tell youse straight that he just missed me in the round-up that sent two of our bunch to the pen."
In the heart of young Beaudry a dull premonition of evil stirred. His hand fell limply. Why had this man come out of the dead past to seek him? His panic-stricken eyes clung as though fascinated to those of Ryan.
"Do you mean ... that you were a rustler?"
Ryan looked full at him. "You've said it. I was a wild young colt thim days, full of the divil and all. But remimber this. I held no grudge at Jack Beaudry. That's what he was elected for—to put me and my sort out of business. Why should I hate him because he was man enough to do it?"
"That's not what some of your friends thought."
"You're right, worse luck. I was out on the range when it happened. I'll say this for Hal Rutherford. He was full of bad whiskey when your father was murdered.... But that ended it for me. I broke with the Huerfano gang outfit and I've run straight iver since."
"Why have you come to me? What do you want?" asked the young lawyer, his throat dry.
"I need your help."
"What for? Why should I give it? I don't know you."
"It's not for mysilf that I want it. There's a friend of your father in trouble. When I saw the sign with your name on it I came in to tell you."
"What sort of trouble?"
"That's a long story. Did you iver hear of Dave Dingwell?"
"Yes. I've never met him, but he put me through law school."
"How come that?"
"I was living in Denver with my aunt. A letter came from Mr. Dingwell offering to pay the expenses of my education. He said he owed that much to my father."
"Well, then, Dave Dingwell has disappeared off the earth."
"What do you mean—disappeared?" asked Roy.
"He walked out of the Legal Tender Saloon one night and no friend of his has seen him since. That was last Tuesday."
"Is that all? He may have gone hunting—or to Denver—or Los Angeles."
"No, he didn't do any one of the three. He was either murdered or else hid out in the hills by them that had a reason for it."
"Do you suspect some one?"
"I do," answered Ryan promptly. "If he was killed, two tinhorn gamblers did it. If he's under guard in the hills, the Rutherford gang have got him."
"The Rutherfords, the same ones that—?"
"The ver-ry same—Hal and Buck and a brood of young hellions they have raised."
"But why should they kidnap Mr. Dingwell? If they had anything against him, why wouldn't they kill him?"
"If the Rutherfords have got him it is because he knows something they want to know. Listen, and I'll tell you what I think."
The Irishman drew up a chair and told Beaudry the story of that night in the Legal Tender as far as he could piece it together. He had talked with one of the poker-players, the man that owned the curio store, and from him had gathered all he could remember of the talk between Dingwell and Rutherford.
"Get these points, lad," Ryan went on. "Dave comes to town from a long day's ride. He tells Rutherford that he has been prospecting and has found gold in Lonesome Park. Nothing to that. Dave is a cattleman, not a prospector. Rutherford knows that as well as I do. But he falls right in with Dingwell's story. He offers to go partners with Dave on his gold mine—keeps talking about it—insists on going in with him."
"I don't see anything in that," said Roy.
"You will presently. Keep it in mind that there wasn't any gold mine and couldn't have been. That talk was a blind to cover something else. Good enough. Now chew on this awhile. Dave sent a Mexican to bring the sheriff, but Sweeney didn't come. He explained that he wanted to go partners with Sweeney about this gold-mine proposition. If he was talking about a real gold mine, that is teetotally unreasonable. Nobody would pick Sweeney for a partner. He's a fathead and Dave worked against him before election. But Sweeney is sheriff of Washington County. Get that?"
"I suppose you mean that Dingwell had something on the Rutherfords and was going to turn them over to the law."
"You're getting warm, boy. Does the hold-up of the Pacific Flyer help you any?"
Roy drew a long breath of surprise. "You mean the Western Express robbery two weeks ago?"
"Sure I mean that. Say the Rutherford outfit did that job."
"And that Dingwell got evidence of it. But then they would kill him." The heart of the young man sank. He had a warm place in it for this unknown friend who had paid his law-school expenses.
"You're forgetting about the gold mine Dave claimed to have found in Lonesome Park. Suppose he was hunting strays and saw them cache their loot somewhere. Suppose he dug it up. Say they knew he had it, but didn't know where he had taken it. They couldn't kill him. They would have to hold him prisoner till they could make him tell where it was."
The young lawyer shook his head. "Too many ifs. Each one makes a weak joint in your argument. Put them all together and it is full of holes. Possible, but extremely improbable."
An eager excitement flashed in the blue eyes of the Irishman.
"You're looking at the thing wrong end to. Get a grip on your facts first. The Western Express Company was robbed of twenty thousand dollars and the robbers were run into the hills. The Rutherford outfit is the very gang to pull off that hold-up. Dave tells Hal Rutherford, the leader of the tribe, that he has sent for the sheriff. Hal tries to get him to call it off. Dave talks about a gold mine he has found and Rutherford tries to fix up a deal with him. There's no if about any of that, me young Sherlock Holmes."
"No, you've built up a case. But there's a stronger case already built for us, isn't there? Dingwell exposed the gamblers Blair and Smith, knocked one of them cold, made them dig up a lot of money, and drove them out of town. They left, swearing vengeance. He rides away, and he is never seen again. The natural assumption is that they lay in wait for him and killed him."
"Then where is the body?"
"Lying out in the cactus somewhere—or buried in the sand."
"That wouldn't be a bad guess—if it wasn't for another bit of testimony that came in to show that Dave was alive five hours after he left the Legal Tender. A sheepherder on the Creosote Flats heard the sound of horses' hoofs early next morning. He looked out of his tent and saw three horses. Two of the riders carried rifles. The third rode between them. He didn't carry any gun. They were a couple of hundred yards away and the herder didn't recognize any of the men. But it looked to him like the man without the gun was a prisoner."
"Well, what does that prove?"
"If the man in the middle was Dave—and that's the hunch I'm betting on to the limit—it lets out the tinhorns. Their play would be to kill and make a quick getaway. There wouldn't be any object in their taking a prisoner away off to the Flats. If this man was Dave, Blair and Smith are eliminated from the list of suspects. That leaves the Rutherfords."
"But you don't know that this was Dingwell."
"That's where you come in, me brave Sherlock. Dave's friends can't move to help him. You see, they're all known men. It might be the end of Dave