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Page 33
Virginia stared at him, half incredulously. But the look in Norton's
eyes, the same look in Brocky Lane's, assured her.
"Why do you wait then?" she asked sharply. "If you know all this, why
don't you arrest the man and his accomplices now? Before it is too
late?"
"And have the whole country laugh at me? Where's my evidence? Just
the word of a dead Indian, repeated by another Indian, and a few rifles
hid in the mountains? Even if we proved the rifles were Galloway's,
and I don't believe we could, how would we set about proving his
intention? No; I've talked it all over with the district attorney and
we can't move yet. We've got our chance at last; the chance to watch
and get Jim Galloway with the goods on. But we've got to wait until he
is just ready to strike. And then we are going to put a stop to
lawlessness in San Juan once and for all."
"But," she objected breathlessly, "if he should strike before you are
ready?"
"It is our one business in life that he doesn't do it. We know what he
is up to; we have found this hiding-place; we shall keep an eye on it
night and day. He doesn't know that we have been here; no one knows
but ourselves. You see now, Miss Page, why I couldn't bring Patten
here? Patten talks too much and Galloway knows every thought in
Patten's mind. And you understand how important it is for you to
forget that you have been here?"
She sat silent, staring into the embers of the dying fire.
"The thing which I can't understand," she said presently, "is that if
Jim Galloway is the 'big man' that you say he is he should do as much
talking as he must have done; that he should have told his plans to
such a man as the Indian who told them to Ignacio Chavez."
"But he didn't tell all of this," Norton informed her. "The Indian
died without guessing what I have told you. He merely knew that the
rifles were here because Galloway had employed him to bring them and
because he was the man who told Galloway of this hiding-place. He
believed that Galloway's whole scheme was to smuggle a lot of arms and
ammunition south and across the border, selling to the Mexicans. But
from what little he could tell Chavez and from what we found out for
ourselves, the whole play became pretty obvious. No, Galloway hasn't
been talking and he has been playing as safe as a man can upon such
business as this. His luck was against him, that's all, when the
Indian died and insisted on being rung out by the San Juan bells.
There's always that little element of chance in any business,
legitimate or otherwise. . . . And now, if you'll finish your
breakfast I'll show you a view you'll never forget and then we'll hit
the trail."
"But, Mr. Lane," she asked, "you don't intend to leave him here all
alone? He will get well with the proper attention; but be must have
that."
"Within another hour or so," Norton told her, "Tom Cutter will be back
with one of Brocky's cowboys. They'll move Lane into a ca�on on the
other side of the mountain. Oh, I know he oughtn't to be moved, but
what else can we do? Besides, Brocky insists on it. Then they'll
arrange to take care of him; if necessary you'll come out again
to-morrow night?"
"Of course," she said. She went to Brocky and held out her hand to
him. "I understand now, I think, why you would refuse to die, no
matter how badly you were hurt, until you had helped Mr. Norton finish
the work you have set your hands to. It's an honor, Mr. Lane, to have
a patient like you."
Whereupon Brocky Lane grew promptly crimson and tongue-tied.
"And now the view, Mr. Norton, and I am ready to go."
He led the way to the outer ledge from which last night they had
entered the cave.
"In daylight you can see half round the world from here," he said as
they stood with their backs to the rock. "Now you can get an idea of
what it's like."
Below her was the chasm formed by these cliffs standing sheer and
fronting other tall cliffs looming blackly, the stars beginning to fade
in the sky above them. Norton pushed a stone outward with his boot;
she heard it strike, rebound, strike again . . . and then there was
silence; when the falling stone reached the bottom no sound came back
to tell her how far it had dropped.
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