[Illustration: 9365]
T was the day following the burial of the body of Dan Willis. Old man
Purdy, whom Carson had gone to see, was at Dilk's cross-roads store
with a basket of fresh eggs, which he had brought to exchange for their
market value in coffee. Several other farmers were seated about the
store on nail-kegs and soap-boxes whittling sticks and chewing tobacco,
their slow tongues busy with the details of the recent death and
interment.
Old Purdy was speaking of how the children had discovered the body, and
remarked that it would have been found several hours sooner if Carson
Dwight had only taken the shorter road that day to Springtown instead of
the longer.
“Why, Dwight come from Darley, didn't he?” asked Dilk, as he wrote
down the number of eggs he had counted on a piece of brown paper on the
counter and waited before continuing.
“Why, yes,” Purdy made answer; “he told me, as we were goin' through the
work he had to do at my house, that he had gone to Springtown an' stayed
all that night an' then rid on to me.”
The store-keeper's hands hovered over the basket for an instant, then
they rested on its edge. “Well, I can't make out what under the sun
Dwight went so far out o' his way for. It's fully five mile farther, and
the road is so rough and washed out that it's mighty nigh out of use.”
“Well, that does look kind o' funny, come to think of it,” admitted
Purdy, as he gazed into the bland faces around him. “I never thought of
it before, but it certainly looks odd, to say the least.”
“Of course thar may not be a thing _in_ it,” said Dilk, in a guarded
tone, “but it _does_ all seem strange, especially after we've heard so
much talk about the threats passin' betwixt them very two men. I mean,
you see, neighbors, that it sort o' looks, providential that--that Dan
met with the accident before Dwight an' him come together over here.
That's what I mean.”
All heads nodded gravely, all minds were busy, each in its own
individual way, and stirred by something more exciting than the mere
accidental death of Willis or the formality of his burial.
There was a rather prolonged silence broken only by the click of the
eggs which Dilk was counting into a new tin dish-pan. When he had
finished he weighed out the coffee and emptied it into the white,
smoothly ironed poke Purdy's wife had sent along for that purpose. Then
he looked straight into Purdy's eyes.
“Did you notice--if thar ain't no harm in axin'--whether Dwight
seemed--well, anyways upset or--or bothered while he was at your house?”
“Well, _I_ didn't,” replied the farmer; “but my wife was in the room
while he was doin' the writin' that had to be done, an' I remember now
she axed me after he left ef he was a drinkin' man. I told her no,
I didn't think he was _now_, though he used to be sorter wild, an' I
wanted to know why she axed me. She said she never had seed anybody's
hands shake like his did while he held the pen, an' that he had a quar
look about the eyes like he'd lost a power o' sleep.”
“Was--was anything said in his presence about Willis's death that
you remember of?” the storekeeper pursued, with the skill of a legal
crossexaminer, while the listeners stared, their cuds of tobacco
compressed between their grinders.
Purdy's face had grown rigid, almost as that of an important witness on
the stand in court. “I can't just remember,” he said. “There was so much
talk about it on all sides that day. Oh yes--now I recall that--well,
you see we was all at my house, eager for news, and it struck me, you
know, as if Dwight wasn't as anxious to talk as the rest--in fact, it
looked like he sorter wanted to change the subject.”
“Oh!” The exclamation was breathed simultaneously from several mouths.
“Of course, neighbors,” Purdy began, in alarm, “don't understand me for
one minute to--” But he broke off, for Dilk had something else to
observe.
“Them two men was at dagger's-p'ints, I've heard,” he declared. “Friends
on both sides was movin' heaven an' earth to keep 'em apart. Now if
Dwight _did_ take that long, roundabout road from Darley to Springtown,
why, they didn't meet. But ef Dwight went the way he always _has_ tuck,
an' I've seed 'im out this way often enough, why--” Dilk raised his
hands and held them poised significantly in mid-air.
“But the coroner's jury found,” said Purdy, “that Willis was shootin' at
a target he'd stuck up on a tree with his own knife, an' that his young
hoss was skittish, an'--”
“All the better proof of bad blood betwixt 'em,” burst from a farmer on
a nail-keg. “The truth is, some hold now that Willis was out practising
so he could wing that particular game. The only thing I see agin what
you-uns seem to think is that it's been kept quiet. Dwight is a lawyer
an' knows the law, an' he wouldn't cover a thing like that up when
all he'd have to do would be to establish proof that it was done in
self-defence an' git his walking-papers.”
“Thar you are!” Dilk said, in a voice that rang with conviction; “but
suppose _one_ thing--suppose this. Suppose the provocation wasn't
exactly strong enough to quite justify killing. Suppose Dwight, made
mad by all he'd heard, drawed an' fired without due warning, and suppose
while he was thar in that quiet spot he had time to think it all over
and decided that he'd stand a better chance of escape by not bein' known
in the matter. A body never can tell. You kin bet your boots if Dwight
_did_ kill 'im an' hid the fact, he had ample legal reasons fer not
wantin' to be mixed up in it.”
The seed was sown, and upon soil well suited to rapid germination and
growth. By the next day the noxious weed had its head well above the
ground, and, like the crab-grass the farmers knew to be so tenaciously
prolific, it was spreading rapidly.