Lane decided that he would see Olson and have a talk with him.  Incidentally, he meant to see all the Dry Valley men who had been in Denver at the time Cunningham was killed.  But the others he saw only to eliminate them from suspicion.  One glance at each of them was enough to give them a clean bill so far as the mystery went.  They knew nothing whatever about it.

Lane rode out to Olson’s place and found him burning brush.  The cattleman explained that he was from Wyoming and wanted to sell some registered Herefords.

Olson looked over his dry, parched crops with sardonic bitterness.  “Do I look like I could buy registered stock?” he asked sourly.

Kirby made a remark that set the ranchman off.  He said that the crops looked as though they needed water.  Inside of five minutes he had heard the story of the Dry Valley irrigation swindle.  Olson was not a foreigner.  He had been born in Minnesota and attended the public schools.  He spoke English idiomatically and without an accent.  The man was a tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered Scandinavian of more than average intelligence.

The death of Cunningham had not apparently assuaged his intense hatred of the man or the bitterness which welled out of him toward Hull.

“Cunningham got his!  Suits me fine!  Now all I ask is that they hang Hull for it!” he cried vindictively.

“Seems to be some doubt whether Hull did it,” suggested Kirby, to draw him on.

“That so?  Mebbe there’s evidence you don’t know about.”  The words had come out in the heat of impulse, shot at Kirby tensely and breathlessly.  Olson looked at the man on the horse and Lane could see caution grow on him.  A film of suspicion spread over the pupils beneath the heavy, ragged eyebrows.  “I ain’t sayin’ so.  All I’m dead sure of is that Hull did it.”

Kirby fired a shot point-blank at him.  “Nobody can be dead sure of that unless he saw him do it.”

“Mebbe some one saw him do it.  Folks don’t tell all they know.”  Olson looked across the desert beyond the palpitating heat waves to the mountains in the distance.

“No.  That’s tough sometimes on innocent people, too.”

“Meanin’ this nephew of old Cunningham.  He’ll get out all right.”

“Will he?  There’s a girl under suspicion, too.  She had no more to do with it than I had, but she’s likely to get into mighty serious trouble just the same.”

“I ain’t read anything in the papers about any girl,” Olson answered sullenly.

“No, it hasn’t got to the papers yet.  But it will.  It’s up to every man who knows anything about this to come clean.”

“Is it?” The farmer looked bleakly at his visitor.  “Seems to me you take a lot of interest in this.  Who are you, anyhow?”

“My name is Kirby Lane.”

“Nephew of the old man?”

“Yes.”

Olson gave a snort of dry, splenetic laughter.  “And you’re out here sellin’ registered Herefords.”