Back at his work Evered was uneasy; but his disquiet would have been increased if he could have seen how Darrin busied himself when he was left alone. The man sat still where he was till Evered had passed out of sight above the knoll; sat still with thoughtful eyes, studying the ground about him and considering the things which Evered had said. And once while he sat with his eyes straight before him, thinking on Evered’s words, he said to himself: “The man did love his wife.” And again: “There’s something hurting him.”
After a little he got up and climbed the knoll cautiously, till he could look in the direction Evered had taken. Evered was not in sight; and when he could be sure of this Darrin went along the shelf above the spring, toward the wood road that came down from the farm. At the road he turned round and retraced his steps, trying to guess the path Evered would have taken to come in sight of the spring itself.
When he came to the edge of the knoll he noted the spot, and cast back and tried again, and still again. He seemed to seek the farthest spot from which the spring was visible. When he had chosen this spot he stood still, surveying the land below, picturing to himself the tragedy that had been enacted there.
He seemed to come to some conclusion in the end, for he paced with careful steps the distance from where he stood to the rock where Mary Evered had been sitting. From that spot again he paced the distance to the alder growth through which the bull had come. Returning, eyes thoughtful, he took pencil and paper and plotted the scene round him, and set dots upon it to mark where Evered must have stood, and where Mary and Semler had sat, and the way by which the bull had come.
The man sat for a long hour that afternoon with this rude map before him, considering it; and he set down distances upon it, and marked the trees. Once he took pebbles and moved them upon his map as the bull and Semler and Evered must have moved upon this ground.
In the end, indecision in his eyes, he folded the paper and put it carefully into his pocket. Then he made a little cooking fire and prepared his supper and ate it. When he had cleaned up his camp he put on coat and cap and started along the hillside below the bull pasture to the road that led toward Fraternity.
This was not unusual with Darrin. He was accustomed to go to the village three or four times a week for his mail or to sit round the stove in Will Bissel’s store and listen to the talk of the country. He had got some profit from this: Jim Saladine, for example, told him one night of a fox den, and took him next day to the spot; and by a week’s patience Darrin had been able to get good pictures of the little foxes at their play. And Jean Bubier had taken him up to the head of the pond to see a cow moose pasturing with Jean’s own cows. Besides these tangible pieces of fortune he had acquired a fund of tales of the woods. He liked the talk about the stove, and took his own share in it so modestly that the men liked him.
Once or twice during his stay in the town there had been talk of Evered; and Darrin had led them to tell the man’s deeds. Great store of these tales, for Evered’s daily life had an epic quality about it. From the murdering red bull the stories went back and back to that old matter of the knife and Dave Riggs, now years agone. Telling this story Lee Motley told Darrin one night that it had made a change in Evered.
Darrin had asked, “What did he do?”
And Motley said: “First off, he didn’t seem bothered much. But it changed him. He’d been wild and strong and hard before, but there was some laughing in him. I’ve always figured he took the thing hard. I’ve not seen the man laugh, right out, since then.”