On the veranda he was shown the bit of pasteboard, and under a battery of accusatory eyes he gazed at it open-mouthed.
“That wasn’t wrote on it when I give it to the sheriff!” he cried.
“Who’s writin’ is this?” demanded his father.
A moment and Mart’s jaw was sagging lower still. “Why, pa, that’s Little Apple’s writin’, ain’t it?”
“That’s what me and Glenn’s decided,” replied his father grimly. “Now, you set down here, son, and come clean. Tell the sheriff everything that happened about your bringin’ this pasteboard down and all.”
Mart obeyed, and when his narrative reached the point where he had passed the cover to his sister at dusk on the desert, and she had dropped it, the sheriff stopped him.
“Canby,” he said, “if you’ll excuse me, that girl o’ yours is a reg’lar little devil! I thought she had somethin’ up her sleeve when I run into her at Stlingbloke—the mare all lathered up and her actin’ kinda worriedlike. She slipped the kid a package when he handed her that pasteboard cover. Up until then he had the cover the boys found, but what they clawed outa the sand was one she’d fixed up for him to give to me—this one here. And she’d wrote ‘Blacky Silk’ in it three times. That’s what; that’s all’s to it! Now why? But wait! You go back to yer dinner, kid. Yer pa and me’ll thrash this thing out.”
“I don’t want no more now,” objected Mart.
“Git!” cried his father.
Mart’s appetite suddenly returned.