"In the last entry in his record I call attention to my brother's
statement that he did not regard Clifton Hines as entirely sane on this
one matter, and to his conviction that the hatred Hines then bore him,
amounting to a delusion of persecution, might on his death turn against
Judson Clark. He instructed me to go to Clark, tell him the story, and
put him on his guard.
"Clark and his party had been at the ranch only a day or two when one
night Hines turned up at Dry River. He wanted the fifty thousand, or
what was left of it, and when he failed to move Henry he attacked him.
The two men on the place heard the noise and ran in, but Hines got away.
Henry swore them to secrecy, and told them the story. He felt he might
need help.
"From what the two men at the ranch told me when I got there, I think
Hines stayed somewhere in the mountains for the next day or two, and
that he came down for food the night Henry died.
"Just what he contributed to Henry's death I do not know. Henry fell in
one room, and was found in bed in another when the hands had been taking
the cattle to the winter range, and he'd been alone in the house.
"When I got there the funeral was over. I read the letter he had left,
and then I talked to the two hands, Bill Ardary and Jake Mazetti. They
would not talk at first, but I showed them Henry's record and then
they were free enough. The autopsy had shown that Henry died from heart
disease, but he had a cut on his head also, and they believed that Hines
had come back, had quarreled with him again, and had knocked him down.
"As Henry had in a way handed over to me his responsibility for the boy,
and as I wanted to transfer the money, I waited for three weeks at the
ranch, hoping he would turn up again. I saw the Thorwald woman, but she
protested that she did not know where he was. And I made two attempts
to see and warn Jud Clark, but failed both times. Then one night the
Thorwald woman came in, looking like a ghost, and admitted that Hines
had been hiding in the mountains since Henry's death, that he insisted
he had killed him, and that he blamed Jud Clark for that, and for all
the rest of his troubles. She was afraid he would kill Clark. The three
of us, the two men at the ranch and myself, prepared to go into the
mountains and hunt for him, before he got snowed in.