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.