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Then, during Langford's absence on one of his rides, he loped his pony up the river trail toward Ben Doubler's cabin. After the departure of the doctor Sheila entered the cabin and closed the door, fastening the bars and drawing a chair over near the table. Doubler seemed to be resting easier, though there was a flush in his cheeks that told of the presence of fever.
"Then you will have Duncan charge Dakota with the murder?" "Of course, my dear; why shouldn't I? Assuredly you would not allow Dakota to go unpunished?" "No," said Sheila, "Doubler's murderer should be punished." Two things were now fixed in her mind as certainties.
"Meanin' that Langford's been to see Dakota?" Doubler's voice was suddenly harsh and his eyes glinted with suspicion. Certain that he had scored, Duncan turned and smiled into the distance. When he again faced Doubler his face wore an expression of sympathy. "When a man's been a friend to you and you find that he's going to double cross you, it's apt to make you feel pretty mean," he said.
But as Langford rode toward Doubler's cabin this morning his thoughts persisted in dwelling on Doubler's final words to him, spoken as he and Duncan had turned their horses to leave the nester's cabin the day before: "If it's goin' to be war, Langford, it ain't goin' to be no pussy-kitten affair. I'm warnin' you to stay away from the Two Forks.
"However," continued Langford, with a sigh of resignation that caused Sheila a shiver of repugnance and horror, "Doubler's death will not be a very great loss to the country. Duncan tells me that he has long been suspected of cattle stealing, and sooner or later he would have been caught in the act.
"So Doubler's been gassing again?" he said with a sneer. "Well, there's never been any love lost between Doubler and me, and so what he says don't amount to much." He laughed oddly. "It's strange to think how thick you are with Doubler," he said. "I understand that your dad and Doubler ain't exactly on a friendly footing, that your dad was trying to buy him out and that he won't sell.
"Then you are ambitious?" "You've struck it," smiled Langford. Dakota caught his gaze, and there was a smile of derision on his lips. "What particular thing are you looking for?" he questioned. "Land." "Mine?" Dakota's lips curled a little. "Doubler's, then," he added as Langford shook his head with an emphatic, negative motion. "He's the only man who's got land near yours."
She was silent; she did not offer to defend Dakota, for in her thoughts still lingered a recollection of the scene of the shooting in Lazette. And when she considered her father's distant manner toward her and Ben Doubler's grave prediction of trouble, it seemed that perhaps Duncan was right.
You're the only one who has been to Doubler's cabin since I left there, I expect, and it must have been you who opened this book. It isn't in the same shape it was when you pulled it off me when I was talking to you down there on the river trail something has been taken out of it, a paper. That's why I rode over here to see if you'd got it. Have you, ma'am?"
Finding the silence in the cabin irksome, she rose, placed Doubler's head in a more comfortable position, and went outside into the bright sunshine of the afternoon. She took a turn around the corral, abstractedly watched the awkward antics of several yearlings which were penned in a corner, and then returned to the cabin door, where she sat on the edge of the step.
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