Louis Bassett, when he started to the old Livingstone ranch, now
the Wasson place, was carefully turning over in his mind David's
participation in the escape of Judson Clark. Certain phases of it were
quite clear, provided one accepted the fact that, following a heavy
snowfall, an Easterner and a tenderfoot had gone into the mountains
alone, under conditions which had caused the posse after Judson Clark to
turn back and give him up for dead.
Had Donaldson sent him there, knowing he was a medical man? If he had,
would Maggie Donaldson not have said so? She had said "a man outside
that she had at first thought was a member of the searching party."
Evidently, then, Donaldson had not prepared her to expect medical
assistance.
Take the other angle. Say David Livingstone had not been sent for. Say
he knew nothing of the cabin or its occupants until he stumbled on them.
He had sold the ranch, distributed his brother's books, and apparently
the townspeople at Dry River believed that he had gone back home.
Then what had taken him, clearly alone and having certainly given the
impression of a departure for the East, into the mountains? To hunt? To
hunt what, that he went about it secretly and alone?
Bassett was inclined to the Donaldson theory, finally. John Donaldson
would have been wanting a doctor, and not wanting one from Norada. He
might have heard of this Eastern medical man at Dry River, have gone to
him with his story, even have taken him part of the way. The situation
was one that would have a certain appeal. It was possible, anyhow: But instead of clarifying the situation Bassett's visit at the
Wasson place brought forward new elements which fitted neither of the
hypotheses in his mind.
To Wasson himself, whom he met on horseback on the road into the ranch,
he gave the same explanation he had given to the store-keeper's wife.
Wasson was a tall man in chaps and a Stetson, and he was courteously
interested.
"Bill and Jake are still here," he said. "They're probably in for dinner
now, and I'll see you get a chance to talk to them. I took them over
with the ranch. Property, you say? Well, I hope it's better land than he
had here."
He turned his horse and rode beside the car to the house.
"Comes a little late to do Henry Livingstone much good," he said. "He's
been lying in the Dry River graveyard for about ten years. Not much
mourned either. He was about as close-mouthed and uncompanionable as
they make them."