"But, Joe, I saw the night-riders go out to-night. Not more than half an hour before the storm came on."
The little man made no answer, but quietly urged his patient forward in the direction of the bunkhouse.
That night was one that lived long in Tresler's memory. Weary in mind and body, he was yet unable to sleep when at last he sought his bunk. His head was racked with excruciating pain, which hammered through his brain with every pulsation of his throbbing temples. But it was not that alone which kept him awake. Thought ran riot with him, and his mind flew from one scene to another without concentration, without continuity, until he felt that if sleep did not come he must go mad.
He had talked late into the night with his shrewd counselor, Joe; and the net result of their talk was that all their theories, suspicions, deductions, were wrong. Jake and Red Mask were not one and the same. In all probability Jake had nothing to do with the ruffianly raider.
They were driven to this ultimate conclusion by the simple fact that while Tresler had been witnessing the movements of the masked night-rider, Joe had been zealously dogging the footsteps of the foreman in the general interests of his mistress. And that individual's footsteps had never once taken him to the rancher's private stable.
Jake had evidently been out on the spy himself. Of this Joe was certain, for the man had scoured the woods in the direction of the river; he had watched the trail from the rancher's stable for nearly half an hour; he had crept up to the verandah of the house under cover of the darkness, seeking Joe knew not what, but always on the alert, always with the unmistakable patience of a man by no means new to such a task. Once Joe had missed him in the woods. Somehow, like a gigantic shadow, Jake had contrived to give him the slip. And this, on comparing notes, the two friends found coincided with the time of the episode of the unclosed window. Doubtless he had been the author of that matter. They made up their minds that he had witnessed the scene in the kitchen, which, of course, accounted for his later dastardly attack. Who had Jake been out looking for? What was the object of his espionage? Had he been looking for him, Tresler, or some one else? And herein lay the mystery. Herein, perhaps, lay the key to the greater problem they sought to solve.