"He's up in this country a good deal," Bob observed finally. "What's he
say is his business?"
"Why, he's in a little timber business, as I understand it; and he buys
a few cattle--sort of general brokerage."
"I see," mused Bob.
He rode in silence for some time, breathing his horse mechanically every
fifty feet or so of the steep trail. He was busily recalling and piecing
together the fragments of what he had at the time considered an
unimportant discussion, and which he had in part forgotten.
"It's a blind," he said at last; "Oldham is working for Baker."
"What makes you think that?"
"Something I heard once."
He rode on. The Basin was dropping away beneath them; the prospect to
the north was broadening as peak after peak raised itself into the line
of ascending vision. The pines, clinging to the steep, cast bars of
shadow across the trail, which zigzagged and dodged, taking advantage of
every ledge and each strip of firm earth. Occasionally they crossed a
singing brook, shaded with willows and cottonwoods, with fragrant bay
and alders, only to clamber out again to the sunny steeps.
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