"What I'm getting at is this," she said, examining her polished nails
critically. "If it does turn out that there was somebody, you'd have to
remember that it was all years and years ago, and be sensible."
"I only want him back," Elizabeth said. "I don't care how he comes, so
he comes."
Louis Bassett had become a familiar figure in the village life by that
time. David depended on him with a sort of wistful confidence that
set him to grinding his teeth occasionally in a fury at his own
helplessness. And, as the extent of the disaster developed, as he saw
David failing and Lucy ageing, and when in time he met Elizabeth, the
feeling of his own guilt was intensified.
He spent hours studying the case, and he was chiefly instrumental in
sending Harrison Miller back to Norada in September. He had struck up a
friendship with Miller over their common cause, and the night he was to
depart that small inner group which was fighting David's battle for
him formed a board of strategy in Harrison's tidy living-room; Walter
Wheeler and Bassett, Miller and, tardily taken into their confidence,
Doctor Reynolds.
The same group met him on his return, sat around with expectant faces
while he got out his tobacco and laid a sheaf of papers on the table,
and waited while their envoy, laying Bassett's map on the table,
proceeded carefully to draw in a continuation of the trail beyond the
pass, some sketchy mountains, and a small square.
"I've got something," he said at last. "Not much, but enough to work
on. Here's where you lost him, Bassett." He pointed with his pencil.
"He went on for a while on the horse. Then somehow he must have lost the
horse, for he turned up on foot, date unknown, in a state of exhaustion
at a cabin that lies here. I got lost myself, or I'd never have found
the place. He was sick there for weeks, and he seems to have stayed on
quite a while after he recovered, as though he couldn't decide what to
do next."
Walter Wheeler stirred and looked up.
"What sort of condition was he in when he left?"
"Very good, they said."
"You're sure it was Livingstone?"
"The man there had a tree fall on him. He operated. I guess that's the
answer."
He considered the situation.
"It's the answer to more than that," Reynolds said slowly. "It shows he
had come back to himself. If he hadn't he couldn't have done it."