Louis Bassett had left for Norada the day after David's sudden
illness, but ten days later found him only as far as Chicago, and
laid up in his hotel with a sprained knee. It was not until the
day Nina went back to the little house in the Ridgely Road, having
learned the first lesson of married life, that men must not only be
captured but also held, that he was able to resume his journey.

He had chafed wretchedly under the delay. It was true that
nothing in the way of a story had broken yet. The Tribune had
carried a photograph of the cabin where Clark had according to the
Donaldson woman spent the winter following the murder, and there
were the usual reports that he had been seen recently in spots as
diverse as Seattle and New Orleans. But when the following Sunday
brought nothing further he surmised that the pack, having lost the
scent, had been called off.

He confirmed this before starting West by visiting some of the
offices of the leading papers and looking up old friends. The
Clark story was dead for the time. They had run a lot of pictures
of him, however, and some one might turn him up eventually, but a
scent was pretty cold in ten years. The place had changed, too.
Oil had been discovered five years ago, and the old settlers had,
a good many of them, cashed in and moved away. The town had grown
like all oil towns.

Bassett was fairly content. He took the night train out of Chicago
and spent the next day crossing Nebraska, fertile, rich and
interesting. On the afternoon of the second day he left the train
and took a branch line toward the mountains and Norada, and from
that time on he became an urbane, interested and generally