"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 if they lifted a finger. But you're not known to the Rutherfords. You slip in over Wagon Wheel Gap to Huerfano Park, pick up what you can, and come out to Battle Butte with your news." "You mean--spy on them?" "Of coorse." "But what if they suspected me?" "Then your heirs at law would collect the insurance," Ryan told him composedly. Excuses poured out of young Beaudry one on top of another. "No, I can't go. I won't mix up in it. It's not my affair. Besides, I can't get away from my business." "I see your business keeps you jumping," dryly commented the Irishman. "And you know best whether it's your affair." Beaudry could have stood it better if the man had railed at him, if he had put up an argument to show why he must come to the aid of the friend who had helped him. This cool, contemptuous dismissal of him stung. He began to pace the room in rising excitement. "I hate that country up there. I've got no use for it. It killed my mother just as surely as it did my father. I left there when I was a child, but I'll never forget that dreadful day seventeen years ago. Sometimes I wake in bed out of some devil's nightmare and live it over. Why should I go back to that bloody battleground? Hasn't it cost me enough already? It's easy for you to come and tell me to go to Huerfano Park--" "Hold your horses, Mr. Beaudry. I'm not tellin' you to go. I've laid the facts before ye. Go or stay as you please." "That's all very well," snapped back the young man. "But I know what you'll think of me if I don't go." "What you'll think of yourself matters more. I haven't got to live with ye for forty years."