第70章 A LITTLE ENLIGHTENMENT(1)

Sometime in the night Jean awoke to hear footsteps in the corridor outside her room.She sat up with a start,and her right hand went groping for her gun.Just for the moment she thought that she was in her room at the Lazy A,and that the night-prowler had come and was beginning his stealthy search of the house.

Then she heard some one down in the street call out a swift sentence in Spanish,and get a laugh for an answer.She remembered that she was in Nogales,within talking distance of Mexico,and that she had found Art Osgood,and that he did not behave like a fugitive murderer,but like a friend who was anxious to help free her father.

The footsteps went on down the hall,--the footsteps of Lite,who had come and stood for a minute outside her door to make sure that all was quiet and that she slept.But Jean,now that she knew where she was,lay wide awake and thinking.Suddenly she sat up again,staring straight before her.

That letter,--the letter Art had taken to her father,the letter he had read and put in the pocket of his chaps!Was that what the man had been hunting for,those nights when he had come searching in that secret,stealthy way?She did not remember ever having looked into the pocket of her father's chaps,though they had hung in her room all those three years since the tragedy.Pockets in chaps were not,as a general thing,much used.Men carried matches in them sometimes,or money.The flap over her dad's chap-pocket was buttoned down,and the leather was stiff;perhaps the letter was there yet.

She got up and turned on the light,and looked at her watch.She wanted to start then,that instant,for Los Angeles.She wanted to take her dad's chaps out of her trunk where she had packed them just for the comfort of having them with her,and she wanted to look and see if the letter was there still.There was no particular reason for believing that this was of any particular importance,or had any bearing whatever upon the crime.But the idea was there,and it nagged at her.

Her watch said that it was twenty-five minutes after two o'clock.The train,Lite had told her,would leave for Tucson at seven-forty-five in the morning.She told herself that,since it was too far to walk,and since she could not start any sooner by staying up and freezing,she might just as well get back into bed and try to sleep.

But she could not sleep.She kept thinking of the letter,and trying to imagine what clue it could possibly give if she found it still in the pocket.Carl had sent it,Art said.A thought came to Jean which she tried to ignore;and because she tried to ignore it,it returned with a dogged insistence,and took clearer shape in her mind,and formed itself into questions which she was compelled at last to face and try to answer.

Was it her Uncle Carl who had come and searched the house at night,trying to find that letter?If it were her uncle,why was he so anxious to find it,after three years had passed?What was in the letter?If it had any bearing whatever upon the death of Johnny Croft,why hadn't her dad mentioned it?Why hadn't her Uncle Carl said something about it?Was the letter just a note about some ranch business?Then why else should any one come at night and prowl all through the house,and never take anything?Why had he come that first night?

Jean drew in her breath sharply.All at once,like a flashlight turned upon a dark corner of her mind,she remembered something about that night.She remembered how she had told her Uncle Carl that she meant to prove that her dad was innocent;that she meant to investigate the devious process by which the Lazy Aranch and all the stock had ceased to belong to her or her father;that she meant to adopt sly,sleuth-like methods;she remembered the very words which she had used.She remembered how bitter her uncle had become.Had she frightened him,somehow,with her bold declaration that she would not "let sleeping dogs lie"any longer?Had he remembered the letter,and been uneasy because of what was in it?But what COULD be in it,if it were written at least a day before the terrible thing had happened?

She remembered her uncle's uncontrolled fury that evening when she had ridden over to see Lite.What had she said to cause it?She tried to recall her words,and finally she did remember saying something about proving that her own money had been paying for her "keep"for three years.Then he had gone into that rage,and she had not at the time seen any connection between her words and his raving anger.But perhaps there was a connection.Perhaps--"Oh,my goodness!"she exclaimed aloud.She was remembering the telegram which she had sent him just before she left Los Angeles for Nogales."He'll just simply go WILD when he gets that wire!"She recalled now how he had insisted all along that Art Osgood knew absolutely nothing about the murder;she recalled also,with an uncanny sort of vividness,Art's manner when he had admitted for the second time that the letter had been from Carl.She remembered how he had changed when he found that her father was being punished for the crime.

She did not know,just yet,how all these tangled facts were going to work out.She had not yet come to the final question that she would presently be asking herself.She felt sure that her uncle knew more,--a great deal more,--about Johnny Croft's death than he had appeared to know;but she had not yet reached the point to which her reasonings inevitably would bring her;perhaps her mind was subconsciously delaying the ultimate conclusion.