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Updated: June 26, 2025
There was an anxiety in his face and a hurry in his movements which struck Sweetwater. "Does this mean that you are through with me?" asked Sweetwater. "That you have no further call for my services?" "Quite so," said the gentleman. "I'm going to take the train to-night. I find that I still have time." Sweetwater began to look alive.
What most people of Gate City and Fort Emory could not understand was the evidence that a big gang of horse thieves, desperadoes and renegades had suddenly appeared about the new town, had spurred away northward in the night, had kept the Frayne road till they reached the Box Elder, riding hard long after sun-up, and there, reinforced, they had gone westward to the Sweetwater trail, and, old frontiersmen though they were, had been caught in the whirl of water at Cañon Springs, losing two of their number and at least a dozen of their horses.
"Look at the fingers of his right hand. They have not moved since the pencil fell out of them." "The letter, or whatever it was, shall be looked for," declared the constable. Sweetwater bowed, his eyes roving restlessly into every nook and corner of the room. "James was the stronger of the two," he remarked; "yet there is no evidence that he made any attempt at suicide."
Again the detective opened his lips and might have spoken, but Sweetwater gave him no chance. "Where is the letter he was writing?" he demanded. "Have any of you seen any paper lying about here?" "He was not writing," objected Knapp; "he was reading; reading in that old Bible you see there."
This had now become insufficient. As they advanced up the Sweetwater, the mountains on either side took on snow. Frequent wading of the streams chilled them. Morning would find them numb, haggard, spiritless, unfitted for the march of the day. A week of this cold weather, lack of food, and overwork produced their effect.
And Sweetwater wondered, as many of us have wondered, at the gulf frequently existing between fancy and fact. Later there came a small excitement. The doctor was seen riding by on his way to the sick man. From the window where he sat, Sweetwater watched him pass up the street and take the road he had himself so lately traversed.
A bulletin was put up. Some hours later, Sweetwater re-entered the room, and, approaching Mr. Gryce with a smile, blurted out: "The bulletin is a great go. I think of course, I cannot be sure that it's going to do the business. I've watched every one who stopped to read it. Many showed interest and many, emotion; she seems to have had a troop of friends. But embarrassment! only one showed that.
As he knew very little of this young man, save that he was the amateur detective who had by some folly of his own been carried off on the Hesper, and who was probably the only man saved from its wreck, he was about to greet him with some commonplace phrase of congratulation, when Sweetwater interrupted him with the following words: "I only wanted to say that it may be easier for you to approach your father with the revelations you are about to make if you knew that in his present frame of mind he is much more likely to be relieved by such proofs of innocence as you can give him than overwhelmed by such as show the lack of kinship between you.
"Bring it round the house, then, to the ground under this window," ordered Sweetwater, without giving any sign that he noticed or even recognised the other's air of condescension. "And, gentlemen, please don't follow. It's footsteps I am after, and the fewer we make ourselves, the easier will it be for me to establish the clew I am after." Mr. Fenton stared. What had got into the fellow?
Afterward I heard that he was Sweetwater, the detective from New York who had had so much to do in unearthing the testimony against Arthur, testimony which in the light of this morning's revelations, had taken on quite a new aspect, as he was doubtless the first to acknowledge.
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