Miss Enid," said the old trapper meaningly. "There was another man." "What!" exclaimed the girl. "Oh, there wasn't nothin' wrong with Louise Rosser, w'ich she was Louise Newbold, but there was another man. I suspected it afore, that's why she was sad. W'en we found her body I knowed it." "I don't understand."[Pg 70] [Pg 70] "These'll explain," said Kirkby. He drew out from his rough hunting coat a package of soiled letters; they were carefully enclosed in an oil skin and tied with a faded ribbon. "You see," he continued, holding them in his hand, yet carefully concealing them from the people at the fire. "W'en she fell off the cliff—somehow the mule lost his footin', nobody never knowed how, leastways the mule was dead an' couldn't tell—she struck on a spur or shelf about a hundred feet below the brink. Evidently she was carryin' the letters in her dress. Her bosom was frightfully tore open an' the letters was lying there. Newbold didn't see 'em, because he went down into the cañon an' came up to the shelf, or butte head, w'ere the body was lyin', but we dropped down. I was the first man down an' I got 'em. Nobody else seein' me, an' there ain't no human eyes, not even my wife's, that's ever looked on them letters, except mine and now yourn." "You are going to give them to me?" "I am," said Kirkby. "But why?" "I want you to know the hull story." "But why, again?" "I rather guess them letters'll tell," answered the old man evasively, "an' I like you, and I don't want to see you throwed away." "Read the letters," he said. "They'll tell the story. Good night." [Pg 71] [Pg 71]
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