Though the area of crime stretched from the Black Water to Grammoch-town, twenty-odd miles, there was never a sign of the perpetrator. The Killer did his bloody work with a thoroughness and a devilish cunning that defied detection.
It was plain that each murder might be set down to the same agency. Each was stamped with the same unmistakable sign-manual: one sheep killed, its throat torn into red ribands, and the others untouched.
It was at the instigation of Parson Leggy that the squire imported a bloodhound to track the Killer to his doom. Set on at a fresh killed carcase at the One Tree Knowe, he carried the line a distance in the direction of the Muir Pike; then was thrown out by a little bustling beck, and never acknowledged the scent again. Afterward he became unmanageable, and could be no further utilized. Then there was talk of inducing Tommy Dobson and his pack to come over from Eskdale, but that came to nothing. The Master of the Border Hunt lent a couple of foxhounds, who effected nothing; and there were a hundred other attempts and as many failures. Jim Mason set a cunning trap or two and caught his own bob-tailed tortoise-shell and a terrible wigging from his missus; Ned Hoppin sat up with a gun two nights over a new slain victim and Londesley of the Home Farm poisoned a carcase. But the Killer never returned to the kill, and went about in the midst of the all, carrying on his infamous traffic and laughing up his sleeve.
In the meanwhile the Dalesmen raged and swore vengeance; their impotence, their unsuccess, and their losses heating their wrath to madness. And the bitterest sting of it all lay in this; that though they could not detect him, they were nigh to positive as to the culprit.
Many a time was the Black Killer named in low-voiced conclave; many a time did Long Kirby, as he stood in the Border Ram and watched M'Adam and the Terror walking down the High, nudge Jim Mason and whisper:
“Theer's the Killer—oneasy be his grave!” To which practical Jim always made the same retort:
“Ay, theer's the Killer; but wheer's the proof?”
And therein lay the crux. There was scarcely a man in the countryside who doubted the guilt of the Tailless Tyke; but, as Jim said, where was the proof? They could but point to his well-won nickname; his evil notoriety; say that, magnificent sheep-dog as he was, he was known even in his work as a rough handler of stock; and lastly remark significantly that the grange was one of the few farms that had so far escaped unscathed. For with the belief that the Black Killer was a sheep-dog they held it as an article of faith that he would in honour spare his master's flock.
There may, indeed, have been prejudice in their judgement. For each has his private grudge against the Terror; and nigh every man bore on his own person, or his clothes, or on the body of his dog, the mark of that huge savage.
Proof?