“Jeff’s all right!” insisted Red. “And we was just spading up the earth to make that tree grow better. It’s too spindly. And——”
“Yes,” declared Bud in the same breath, “Jeff’s feeling fine. He’ll be back pres’n’ly. We was trying to see could we bury some garbage out yonder, ’stead of bothering to burn it. We——”
“Jeff is dead!” interrupted Dan, his voice all at once lifeless and flat. “You been burying him. You don’t want me to know. He——”
The two others fidgeted guiltily. Then, clearing his throat, Keegan said:
“I wanted to keep it from you, till after to-night, Danny. I’m sorry. Sorry, right down to the ground. But since you’ve guessed that much of it I’d best tell you the whole thing. Buck up and take it like a he-man, son. After all, he was only just a dog. I’ll buy you another one and——”
“There ain’t any other one!” denied Rorke chokingly. “There was only just Jeff! Him and me. And he was the chum I— What happened to him?” he demanded fiercely, swallowing very hard and trying to keep his voice steady and his eyes dry. “Spill it!”
“Then take it!” cried Keegan harshly. “Take it straight, like a he-man had ought to take rotten news. This morning, when I went apast your door, there lay Jeff. He was stone-dead. I picked him up and brang him down on the porch. I knowed how it’d queer your nerve to find out he was gone. So I aimed to bury him and tell you he’d just strayed off, like; and that he would come home by and by. When I got him out on the porch I noticed he was all strained backward. And I’d seen dogs poisoned by strychnia before. There ain’t any other poison that makes ’em look that way. He——”
“Poisoned!” yelled Dan in blind fury, catching at the word. “I’ll find the swine that did it, if it takes every cent I got. And when I once get hold of him——”
“I beat you to it, Danny,” continued Red’s sorrowing tones. “I got Curly, here, to start digging a grave; and I piked down to Reuter’s drug store. I had a sneaking s’spicion, already. Reuter was just opening up for the day when I got there. I asked him who had bought strychnia of him lately. The only strychnia he’s sold in the past week was what he sold to a man yesterday; a feller who had a doctor’s p’scription for it, and said he wanted it to poison cats that kep’ him awake by yowling under his window. He got Reuter to tell him how to fix it up in a piece of meat——”