The Breaking Point - Page 54/275

The whole situation turned on the deposition of Mrs. Donaldson, now

dead. The local authorities at Norada maintained that the woman had not

been sane for several years. On the other hand, the cabin to which she

referred was well known, and no search of it had been made at the time.

Clark's horse had been found not ten miles from the town, and the cabin

was buried in snow twenty miles further away. If Clark had made that

journey on foot he had accomplished the impossible.

Certain facts, according to the local correspondent, bore out Margaret

Donaldson's confession. Inquiry showed that she was supposed to have

spent the winter following Judson Clark's crime with relatives in Omaha.

She had returned to the ranch the following spring.

A detailed description of Judson Clark, and a photograph of him

accompanied the story. Bassett re-read the article carefully, and

swore a little, under his breath. If he had needed confirmation of

his suspicions, it lay to his hand. But the situation had changed over

night. There would be a search for Clark now, as wide as the knowledge

of his disappearance. Local police authorities would turn him up in

every city from Maine to the Pacific coast. Even Europe would be on the

lookout and South America.

But it was not the police he feared so much as the press. Not all of the

papers, but some of them, would go after that story, and send their best

men on it. It offered not so much a chance of solution as an opportunity

to revive the old dramatic story. He could see, when he closed his eyes,

the local photographers climbing to that cabin and later sending its

pictures broadcast, and divers gentlemen of the press, eager to

pit their wits against ten years of time and the ability of a once

conspicuous man to hide from the law, packing their suitcases for

Norada.

No, he couldn't stop now. He would go on, like the others, and with this

advantage, that he was morally certain he could lay his hands on Clark

at any time. But he would have to prove his case, connect it. Who, for

instance, was the other man in the cabin? He must have known who the boy

was who lay in that rough bunk, delirious. Must have suspected anyhow.

That made him, like the Donaldsons, accessory after the fact, and

criminally liable. Small chance of him coming out with any confession.

Yet he was the connecting link. Must be.

On his third reading the reporter began to visualize the human elements

of the fight to save the boy; he saw moving before him the whole pitiful

struggle; the indomitable ranch manager, his heart-breaking struggle

with the blizzard, the shooting of his horse, the careful disarming of

suspicion, and later the intrepid woman, daring that night ride through

snow that had sent the posse back to its firesides to the boy, locked in

the cabin and raving.