The Breaking Point

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  XXII

  For several days after his visit to the Livingstone ranch Louis Bassettmade no move to go to the cabin. He wandered around the town, madepromiscuous acquaintances and led up, in careful conversations with sucholder residents as he could find, to the Clark and Livingstone families.Of the latter he learned nothing; of the former not much that he had notknown before.

  One day he happened on a short, heavy-set man, the sheriff, who had losthis office on the strength of Jud Clark's escape, and had now recoveredit. Bassett had brought some whisky with him, and on the promise of adrink lured Wilkins to his room. Over his glass the sheriff talked.

  "All this newspaper stuff lately about Jud Clark being alive is deadwrong," he declared, irritably. "Maggie Donaldson was crazy. You canask the people here about her. They all know it. Those newspaper fellowsdescended on us here with a tooth-brush apiece and a suitcase full ofliquor, and thought they'd get something. Seemed to think we'd hold outon them unless we got our skins full. But there isn't anything to holdout. Jud Clark's dead. That's all."

  "Sure he's dead," Bassett agreed, amiably. "You found his horse, didn'tyou?"

  "Yes. Dead. And when you find a man's horse dead in the mountains in ablizzard, you don't need any more evidence. It was five months beforeyou could see a trail up the Goat that winter."

  Bassett nodded, rose and poured out another drink.

  "I suppose," he observed casually, "that even if Clark turned up now, itwould be hard to convict him, wouldn't it?"

  The sheriff considered that, holding up his glass.

  "Well, yes and no," he said. "It was circumstantial evidence, mostly.Nobody saw it done. The worst thing against him was his running off."

  "How about witnesses?"

  "Nobody actually saw it done. John Donaldson came the nearest, and he'sdead. Lucas's wife was still alive, the last I heard, and I reckon thevalet is floating around somewhere."

  "I suppose if he did turn up you'd make a try for it." Bassett stared atthe end of his cigar.

  "We'd make a try for it, all right," Wilkins said somberly. "There aresome folks in this county still giving me the laugh over that case."

  The next day Bassett hired a quiet horse, rolled in his raincoat twodays' supply of food, strapped it to the cantle of his saddle, and rodeinto the mountains. He had not ridden for years, and at the end of thefirst hour he began to realize that he was in for a bad time. By noonhe was so sore that he could hardly get out of the saddle, and so stiffthat once out, he could barely get back again. All morning the horsehad climbed, twisting back and forth on a narrow canyon trail, gruntingoccasionally, as is the way of a horse on a steep grade. All morningthey had followed a roaring mountain stream, descending in smallcataracts from the ice fields far above. And all morning Bassett hadbeen mentally following that trail as it had been ridden ten yearsago by a boy maddened with fear and drink, who drove his horse forwardthrough the night and the blizzard, with no objective and no hope.

  He found it practically impossible to connect this frenzied fugitivewith the quiet man in his office chair at Haverly, the man who was orwas not Judson Clark. He lay on a bank at noon and faced the situationsquarely, while his horse, hobbled, grazed with grotesque little forwardjumps in an upland meadow. Either Dick Livingstone was Clark, or hewas the unknown occasional visitor at the Livingstone Ranch. If hewere Clark, and if that could be proved, there were two courses open toBassett. He could denounce him to the authorities and then springthe big story of his career. Or he could let things stand. From aprofessional standpoint the first course attracted him, as a man hebegan to hate it. The last few days had shed a new light on JudsonClark. He had been immensely popular; there were men in the town whotold about trying to save him from himself. He had been extravagant, buthe had also been generous. He had been "a good kid," until liberty andmoney got hold of him. There had been more than one man in the sheriff'sposse who hadn't wanted to find him.

  He was tempted to turn back. The mountains surrounded him, somber andmajestically still. They made him feel infinitely small and ratherimpertinent, as though he had come to penetrate the secrets they neveryielded. He had almost to fight a conviction that they were hostile.

  After an hour or so he determined to go on. Let them throw him over agorge if they so determined. He got up, grunting, and leading the horsebeside a boulder, climbed painfully into the saddle. To relieve hisdepression he addressed the horse:

  "It would be easier on both of us if you were two feet narrower in thebeam, old dear," he said.

  Nevertheless, he made good time. By six o'clock he knew that he musthave made thirty odd miles, and that he must be near the cabin. Alsothat it was going to be bitterly cold that night, under the snow fields,and that he had brought no wood axe. The deep valley was purple withtwilight by seven, and he could scarcely see the rough-drawn trail maphe had been following. And the trail grew increasingly bad. For the lastmile or two the horse took its own way.

  It wandered on, through fords and out of them, under the low-growingbranches of scrub pine, brushing his bruised legs against rocks. He haddefinitely decided that he had missed the cabin when the horse turnedoff the trail, and he saw it.

  It was built of rough logs, the chinks once closed with mud which hadfallen away. The door stood open, and his entrance into its darkness wasfollowed by the scurrying of many little feet. Bassett unstrapped hisraincoat from the saddle with fingers numb with cold, and flung it tothe ground. He uncinched and removed the heavy saddle, hobbled his horseand removed the bridle, and turned him loose with a slap on the flank.

  "For the love of Mike, don't go far, old man," he besought him. And wasstartled by the sound of his own voice.

  By the light of his candle lantern the prospects were extremely poor.The fir branches in the double-berthed bunk were dry and useless, thefloor was crumbling under his feet, and the roof of the lean-to hadfallen in and crushed the rusty stove. In the cabin itself some one hadrecently placed a large flat stone in a corner for a fireplace, with twoslabs to back it, and above it had broken out a corner of the roof asa chimney. Bassett thought he saw the handwork of some enterprisingjournalist, and smiled grimly.

  He set to work with the resource of a man who had learned to take whatcame, threw the dry bedding onto the slab and set a match to it, broughtin portions of the lean-to roof for further supply for the fire, openeda can of tomatoes and set it on the edge of the hearth to heat, andsliced bacon into his diminutive frying-pan.

  It was too late for any examination that night. He ate his supper fromthe rough table, drawing up to it a broken chair, and afterwards broughtin more wood for his fire. Then, with a lighted cigar, and with hisboots steaming on the hearth, he sat in front of the blaze and fell intodeep study.

  He was aching in every muscle when he finally stretched out on the bareboards of the lower bunk. While he slept small furry noses appeared inthe openings in the broken floor, to be followed by little bodies thatmoved cautiously out into the open. He roused once and peered over theedge of the bunk. Several field mice were basking in front of the dyingembers of the fire, and two were sitting on his boots. He grinned atthem and lay back again, but he found himself fully awake and veryuncomfortable. He lay there, contemplating his own folly, and demandingof himself almost fiercely what he had expected to get out of all thiseffort and misery. For ten years or so men had come here. Wilkins hadcome, for one, and there had been others. And had found nothing, and hadgone away. And now he was there, the end of the procession, to look forGod knows what.

  He pulled the raincoat up around his shoulders, and lay back stiffly.Then--he was not an imaginative man--he began to feel that eyes werestaring at him, furtive, hidden eyes, intently watching him.

  Without moving he began to rake the cabin with his eyes, wall to wall,corner to corner. He turned, cautiously, and glanced at the door intothe lean-to. It gaped, cavernous and empty. But the sense of beingwatched persisted, and when he looked at the floor the field mice haddisappeared.

 
; He began gradually to see more clearly as his eyes grew accustomed tothe semi-darkness, and he felt, too, that he could almost locate thedirection of the menace. For as a menace he found himself consideringit. It was the broken, windowless East wall, opposite the bunk.

  After a time the thing became intolerable. He reached for his revolver,and getting quickly out of the bunk, ran to the doorway and threw openthe door, to find himself peering into a blackness like a wall, and tohear a hasty crunching of the underbrush that sounded like some animalin full flight.

  With the sounds, and his own movement, the terror died. The cold nightair on his face, the feel of the pine needles under his stockingedfeet, brought him back to sense and normality. Some creature of thewilderness, a deer or a bear, perhaps, had been moving stealthilyoutside the cabin, and it was sound he had heard, not a gaze he hadfelt. He was rather cynically amused at himself. He went back into thecabin, closed the door, and stooped to turn his boots over before thefire.

  It was while he was stooping that he heard a horse galloping off alongthe trail.

  He did not go to sleep again. Now and then he considered the possibilityof its having been his own animal, somehow freed of the rope andfrightened by the same thing that had frightened him. But when with thefirst light he went outside, his horse, securely hobbled, was grazing onthe scant pasture not far away.

  Before he cooked his breakfast he made a minute examination of theground beneath the East wall, but the earth was hard, and a brokenbranch or two might have been caused by his horse. He had no skill inwoodcraft, and in the broad day his alarm seemed almost absurd. Somefree horse on the range had probably wandered into the vicinity of thecabin, and had made off again on a trot. Nevertheless, he made uphis mind not to remain over another night, but to look about afterbreakfast, and then to start down again.

  He worked on his boots, dry and hard after yesterday's wetting, friedhis bacon and dropped some crackers into the sizzling fat, and atequickly. After that he went out to the trail and inspected it. He hadan idea that range horses were mostly unshod, and that perhaps the trailwould reveal something. But it was unused and overgrown. Not until hehad gone some distance did he find anything. Then in a small bare spothe found in the dust the imprints of a horse's shoes, turned down thetrail up which he had come.

  Even then he was slow to read into the incident anything that related tohimself or to his errand. He went over the various contingencies of thetrail: a ranger, on his way to town; a forest fire somewhere; a belatedhound from the newspaper pack. He was convinced now that human eyes hadwatched him for some time through the log wall the night before, but hecould not connect them with the business in hand.

  He set resolutely about his business, which was to turn up, somehow,some way, a proof of the truth of Maggie Donaldson's dying statement. Tobegin with then he accepted that statement, to find where it would leadhim, and it led him, eventually, to the broken-down stove under thefallen roof of the lean-to.

  He deliberately set himself to work, at first, to reconstruct the lifein the cabin. Jud would have had the lower bunk, David the upper. Theskeleton of a cot bed in the lean-to would have been Maggie's. But noneof them yielded anything.

  Very well. Having accepted that they lived here, it was from here thatthe escape was made. They would have started the moment the snow wasmelted enough to let them get out, and they would have taken, not thetrail toward the town, but some other and circuitous route toward therailroad. But there had been things to do before they left. They wouldhave cleared the cabin of every trace of occupancy; the tin cans,Clark's clothing, such bedding as they could not carry. The cans musthave been a problem; the clothes, of course, could have been burned.But there were things, like buttons, that did not burn easily. Clark'swatch, if he wore one, his cuff links. Buried?

  It occurred to him that they might have disposed of some of theunburnable articles under the floor, and he lifted a rough board or two.But to pursue the search systematically he would have needed a pickaxe,and reluctantly he gave it up and turned his attention to the lean-toand the buried stove.

  The stove lay in a shallow pit, filled with ancient ashes and crumbledbits of wood from the roof. It lay on its side, its sheet-iron sidescollapsed, its long chimney disintegrated. He was in a heavy sweatbefore he had uncovered it and was able to remove it from its bed ofashes and pine needles. This done, he brought his candle-lantern andsettled himself cross-legged on the ground.

  His first casual inspection of the ashes revealed nothing. He set towork more carefully then, picking them up by handfuls, examining anddiscarding. Within ten minutes he had in a pile beside him some burnedand blackened metal buttons, the eyelets and a piece of leather from ashoe, and the almost unrecognizable nib of a fountain pen.

  He sat with them in the palm of his hand. Taken alone, each one wasinsignificant, proved nothing whatever. Taken all together, they assumedvast proportions, became convincing, became evidence.

  Late that night he descended stiffly at the livery stable, and turnedhis weary horse over to a stableman.

  "Looks dead beat," said the stableman, eyeing the animal.

  "He's got nothing on me," Bassett responded cheerfully. "Better give hima hot bath and put him to bed. That's what I'm going to do."

  He walked back to the hotel, glad to stretch his aching muscles. Thelobby was empty, and behind the desk the night clerk was waiting for themidnight train. Bassett was wide awake by that time, and he went back tothe desk and lounged against it.

  "You look as though you'd struck oil," said the night clerk.

  "Oil! I'll tell you what I have struck. I've struck a livery stablesaddle two million times in the last two days."

  The clerk grinned, and Bassett idly pulled the register toward him.

  "J. Smith, Minneapolis," he read. Then he stopped and stared. RichardLivingstone was registered on the next line above.