"I thought Rutter died before giving you the exact
location."
As a matter of fact, MacRae, in detailing the lurid happenings of that
night, did not repeat the words Rutter had gasped out with his last
breath. He simply said that Hans died after telling us that they had
been attacked, and that the gold was hidden at Writing-Stone. And
Lessard, as I said before, had passed up the gold episode at the time;
all his concern seemed to be for the robbers' apprehension, which was
natural enough since a crime had undoubtedly been committed and he bore
the responsibility of catching and punishing the perpetrators. The
restoration of stolen goods was probably dwarfed in his mind by the
importance of capturing the stealers.
I was vastly interested in that phase of it, too, for I realized that a
speedy gathering in of those men of the mask was my only chance to lay
hold of La Pere's ten thousand; and I had a theory that they were hardly
the sort to be content with that sum, and that Hank Rowan's _cached_
gold would be an excellent bait for them, if it could be uncovered.
Those steadily reiterated phrases, "raw gold--on the rock" might have
some understandable meaning if one were on the spot, but MacRae had kept
that to himself--and I wasn't running a bureau of information for
Lessard's benefit.
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