'I was talking about the way I've been trying to buy her out,' said Callahan. 'If you were eavesdropping outside the cabin the other day, you know I made my final offer to Aurora, and she turned me down flat.'
Longarm nodded.
'So there's nothing else left to do,' said Callahan with another shrug. 'if I can't buy her out before I propose, I guess I'll just have to go ahead and ask her to marry me anyway. That was what Eli and I were talking about, Marshal. You can ask him if you don't believe me.'
Longarm wasn't sure why Callahan thought he was more likely to believe the old cook. Callahan was either one hell of an actor, or he was really telling the truth about his involvement with the situation. Longarm had been counting on the man panicking when confronted with the knowledge of his guilt. That hadn't worked out at all.
And Longarm was once again left with no solid proof of anything.
'All right, Callahan,' he said abruptly. 'I ain't saying I believe this yarn you've spun for me, but I reckon you know I've got my eye on you now. We'll just see what happens.'
'I've told you the truth, Marshal.' A trace of fire appeared in Callahan's gaze. Now that he had gotten over the awkwardness of being forced to confess his love for Aurora, his normal spirit was coming back to him. 'If you don't want to believe me, that's your problem.'
'We'll see,' said Longarm. 'Thanks for the drink.' He turned toward the door of the cabin.
'That's it?' asked Callahan in surprise. 'You're leaving?'
'Not much else I can do, is there? Not unless you want to confess that you tried to have me killed and caused all that trouble around the Mcentire camp.'
Callahan shook his head vehemently. 'I didn't have anything to do with any of that.'
Longarm just raised one eyebrow skeptically and stepped out of the cabin.
The roan was tied to a hitching post nearby. Longarm untied the reins and stepped up into the saddle. Callahan came out of the cabin behind him, and although Longarm didn't look back as he rode away from the camp, he could feel the boss logger watching him. Callahan's eyes seemed to bore into his back.
He had put Callahan on notice, and if the man was indeed guilty, it was now just a matter of giving the man enough rope to hang himself.
And of staying alive in the meantime, Longarm added grimly to himself.
He had been heading for the Mcentire camp when he had gotten sidetracked on this Callahan business, so that was where he pointed the roan when he reached the main trail once more. The skin on the back of his neck crawled a little as he rode. Callahan might move fast to eliminate him as a threat. Even now, some of those hired gunmen might be riding through the forest to get in front of him and set up an ambush. Or they might just come straight after him and try to ride him down. Either way, Longarm knew he had to be alert for any sign of trouble.
Nothing happened on the way to Aurora's headquarters, however. When Longarm rode up there, everything was evidently business as usual. The sawmill was operating, and Longarm saw a boom of logs floating down the creek. Some of the timbermen known as river pigs were controlling it with long poles and ropes that had been attached to the iron spikes called dogs that had been driven into the outer logs of the boom. Those outer logs were strung end to end and attached to each other to form a ring that contained the rest of the logs. The river pigs were good at their job and floated the boom gently up to the big open end of the sawmill building that extended out over the water. This boom was not going to get away and cause trouble.
The only thing Longarm noticed that was unusual was the level of the creek. It seemed to have dropped, though there was still enough water in the stream to float the boom with no trouble. There wouldn't be if the creek went down much more. Longarm resolved to satisfy his curiosity and ask Aurora about that, but first he wanted to make certain she was all right and that there had been no trouble here in his absence. He brought the roan to a stop and dismounted, looping the reins around the hitching post in front of Aurora's cabin.
Jared Flint answered his knock on the door instead of Aurora. The foreman said, 'Hello, Marshal. Finally get enough of Kinsman's hospitality?'
Longarm had sensed all along that Flint didn't particularly like him, so the man's attitude came as no surprise. Also, the hatred between the loggers and the cattlemen ran so deep and strong that the slightest appearance of favoring one side over the other was enough to make enemies. Longarm didn't let it worry him. He just asked, 'Is Mrs. Mcentire here?'
Aurora must have already heard Flint's greeting to him, because she appeared at the foreman's shoulder and said, 'Custis! Are you all right?
Have you recovered from that wound?'
'Pretty much,' Longarm said. He stepped forward, and Flint had no choice but to move aside and let him into the cabin. He ignored the bushy-browed glower Flint gave him and went on to Aurora. 'I figured I'd better see how things were going here.'
'It's been quiet,' she told him. 'If it stayed this peaceful all the time, we wouldn't have any trouble meeting the terms of that contract. We've already made up some of the time and timber we lost. And thanks to some of Mr. Flint's ideas, we're gonna be able to make up the rest of it.'
Longarm looked at Flint quizzically, and the man said, 'You might not understand, Marshal.'
'I've been around a few logging operations before,' Longarm said mildly. 'This wouldn't have anything to do with the way the creek's gone down some, would it?'
'As a matter of fact, it does,' said Aurora. 'We've dammed off one of the tributaries that feeds into the creek higher up the mountain. When it forms a big enough pond, we're going to build a log flume from it down here to the mill. We can still float booms down the creek from the lower slopes the way we've been doing, but when we're finished with the flume we can go ahead and start cutting on the higher slopes too, and shoot the logs down that way. We'll be working on two sections of the mountain at once, instead of just one.'
'That'll take more men,' Longarm pointed out.
'Already hired 'em,' said Flint. 'They built that dam, and they've started the upper end of the flume.'
Longarm nodded. If everything went as Aurora and Flint planned, the camp's production would indeed increase.
