Upon arriving at her cabin she was not at all surprised to find that
it had been thoroughly searched, albeit with less care than the
searcher had been in the habit of bestowing upon the readjustment of
the various objects of the room exactly as she had left them. Canned
goods and dishes were disarranged upon their shelves, and the loose
section of floor board beneath her bunk that had evidently served as
the secret _cache_ of the sheep herder, had been fitted clumsily into
its place. The evident boldness, or carelessness of this latest
outrage angered her as no previous search had done. Heretofore each
object had been returned to its place with painstaking accuracy so
that it had been only through the use of fine-spun cobwebs and
carefully arranged bits of dust that she had been able to verify her
suspicion that the room had really been searched--and there had been
times when even the dust and the cobwebs had been replaced. Whoever
had been searching the cabin had proven himself a master of detail,
and had at least, paid her the compliment of possessing imagination,
and a shrewdness equaling his own. Was it possible that the searcher,
emboldened by her repeated failure to spy upon him at his work, had
ceased to care whether or not she knew of his visits? The girl
recalled the three weary days she had spent watching from the
hillside. And how she had decided to buy a lock for her door, until
the futility of it had been brought home to her by the discovery that
her trunks were being searched along with her other belongings, and
their locks left in perfect condition. So far, he might well scorn her
puny attempts at discovery. Or, had a new factor entered the game? Had
someone of cruder mold undertaken to discover her secret? The thought
gave her a decided uneasiness. Tired out by her trip, she did not
light the fire, and after disposing of the cold lunch Mrs. Thompson
had put up for her, affixed the bar, and went to bed, with her six-gun
within reach of her hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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