"I don't need to. Come up to the house and have breakfast. And for Heaven's sake don't say anything to frighten the kid's mother."
"What do you take us for?" said Glass. "We'll treat the whole thing as a joke—to her."
Casey breakfasted with them, and after they had gone sought Simon. The old Indian, full to repletion, was squatting on the kitchen steps, smoking and blinking sleepily.
"No see um Sandy," he observed. "Where him stop?"
"No more Sandy stop this illahee," Casey replied. "Sandy klatawa kopa stone illahee, all same Tom." Meaning that Sandy had gone in the direction of the hills, as had McHale.
"Why him klatawa?" Simon asked.
Casey explained, and Simon listened gravely. His receptiveness was enormous. Information dropped into him as into a bottomless pit, vanishing without splash.
"Sandy hyas young fool," he commented. "Me tell him mamook huyhuy moccasin. S'pose moccasin stop, ikt man findum, then heltopay. Polisman mamook catchum, put um in skookum house, maybeso hang um kopa neck."
"What are you talking about, anyway?" Casey demanded. And Simon told him of the track of the patched moccasin and of his warning to Sandy.
Casey immediately fitted things together. He knew that Sandy's right moccasin was almost invariably worn through at the toe. Before they left he had seen him patching them, and because they wore through at the same place the patches were of nearly the same shape. So that if Glass had found a patched moccasin it was not necessarily the one which had made the track. But that would make little difference. Either Farwell or his assistant must have told Glass about this track. If he had found a pair of Sandy's moccasins to correspond with the footprint he had come very near getting Sandy with the goods. But Farwell or somebody must have directed Glass's suspicions to Sandy.