"But he dropped
him and then made him throw down his gun and crawl out of the brush.
Then Tom Cutter gathered him in, took him across the county line, gave
him into the hands of Ben Roberts who is sheriff over there, and came
on to San Juan. Roberts will simply hold Moraga on some trifling
charge, and see that he keeps his mouth shut until we are ready for him
to talk."
"Then Brocky Lane and Tom Cutter were together on Mt. Temple?"
"Near enough for Tom to hear the shooting."
They grew silent again. Clearly Norton had done what explaining he
deemed necessary and was taking her no deeper into his confidences.
She told herself that he was right, that these were not merely his own
personal secrets, that as yet he would be unwise to trust a stranger
further than he was forced to. And yet, unreasonably or not, she felt
a little hurt. She had liked him from the beginning and from the
beginning she felt that in a case such as his she would have trusted to
intuition and have held back nothing. But she refrained from voicing
the questions which none the less insisted upon presenting themselves
to her: What was the thing that had brought both Brocky Lane and Tom
Cutter to Mt. Temple? What had they been seeking there in a wilderness
of crag and cliff? Why was Roderick Norton so determined that Jim
Galloway should not so much as suspect that these men were watchful in
the mountains? What sinister chain of circumstance had impelled
Moraga, who Norton said was Galloway's man, to shoot down the cattle
foreman? And Galloway himself, what type of man must he be if all that
she had heard of him were true; what were his ambitions, his plans, his
power?
Before long Norton pointed out the shadowy form of Mt.
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