noon
All morning they had followed a roaring mountain stream , descending in small cataracts from the ice fields far above . And all morning Bassett had been mentally following that trail as it had been ridden ten years ago by a boy maddened with fear and drink , who drove his horse forward through the night and the blizzard , with no objective and no hope . He found it practically impossible to connect this frenzied fugitive with the quiet man in his office chair at Haverly , the man who was or was not Judson Clark . He lay on a bank at noon and faced the situation squarely , while his horse , hobbled , grazed with grotesque little forward jumps in an upland meadow . Either Dick Livingstone was Clark , or he was the unknown occasional visitor at the Livingstone Ranch . If he were Clark , and if that could be proved , there were two courses open to Bassett . He could denounce him to the authorities and then spring the big story of his career .