“He’s in the right of it, Mr. Brown,” said Mel Lunt. The officials left the stable, ground their cigars to extinction with the heels of their boots and came back. “Yer darned particular,” remarked the deputy sheriff. “Nothing out of the way,” returned McAllister. “Well, we’re looking for Richard Sherwood from French River,” said the other. “He cleared out a couple of weeks ago an’ took his little girl with him. She’s gone too, anyhow. I heard he used to be a friend of the folks living here, so I come to ask if you’d seen him in the last two weeks. I didn’t come to set yer darned stable afire.” “No, we haven’t seen Sherwood,” replied McAllister. “What’s the trouble? Has he taken to poaching again?” “It’s worse than poaching, this time. I was up on French River ten days ago, taking a look over the salmon pools and one thing an’ another, to see if the game wardens were onto their job, an’ darn it all if I didn’t trip over a bran’ new grave in a little clearing. There’s an old Injun who calls himself Noel Sabattis lives there, an’ he told me he’d buried a dead man there a few days ago. I asked questions and he answered them; and then he helped me dig—and there was a man who’d been shot through the heart!” “You don’t say!” exclaimed McAllister. “Who was he?” “Louis Balenger.” “Balenger? What would bring him back, I wonder? What else did you find out?” “Nothing. We’re looking for Richard Sherwood.” “What has he ever done that would lead you to suspect him of a thing like that? I used to know him and he was no more the kind to kill a man than I am. Did the old Injun say Sherwood did it?” “No, not him. He wouldn’t say a word against Sherwood. But he don’t matter much, one way or the other, old Noel Sabattis! He ain’t all there, I guess. He says he found Balenger in Sherwood’s pirogue, dead, when Sherwood and the little girl were off trout fishing. When Sherwood come back he helped Noel dig the grave; and next day he lit out and took the girl with him—so that Injun says.” “Why don’t you blame
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