"You said the Siwashes would tell you which of the two men rode away from the gulch, the morning of the murder," he reminded her. "Did they?"
"That's another peculiar thing," she replied, lines of perplexity wrinkling her stained brow. "My _klootchmen_ friends insist that both Kluger and Bonnemort were here as usual all that morning. They made _hiyu_ clean-up--gathered much gold--that Thursday morning and are positive they are not mistaken about the kind white men. The Indians haven't heard that Bart was murdered; they still are chuckling at the way he was run out of the gulch."
"That would seem to leave us cold--as cold as we are on the trail of that scoundrel Karmack, wouldn't it?"
Not a flicker did the girl show to indicate that she had hope of hearing something in that particular get-your-man direction.
But within the tent Seymour saw something else to convince him that the search for Bart's slayer was exceedingly "warm." In the presence of this second inanimate witness, he was more anxious than ever to get the girl safely out of the gulch--before the fireworks.
"I'm nearly through in here," he went on. "Have you planned how you will get yourself out?"
"I can go back the way I came, I suppose," she answered with a pout that was not as effective as it would have been had she been naturally clad. "But I thought you were going to open the cañon gate--from the inside out?"
"Even so, I can't have you within range when I--when I pick the lock."
"You mean--you mean there may be some shooting?" she demanded with suppressed excitement.
He did not like the gleam of hope that seemed to shine in her eyes. "You've done your part, Moira--more than any other woman would have dared to do. I wonder if I can trust you to wait for me in that graveyard down the creek?"
"To sit and idly wait when I might have a hand in the excitement!" she moaned. "Being a woman is an awful handicap, Sergeant Scarlet."
"That will be the helping part in this crime clean-up," he assured her, "to sit and wait. And if I do not come for you, you are to make your own way back to the mission and wait some more until other Mounties arrive to settle the score. You've done enough; leave the rest to me."
Moira protested that she had accomplished nothing but the ruin of their theories. Couldn't she do something constructive?