“You know all the country round here well?” asked the trooper.
Darby considered this carefully. “Yes,” he admitted again.
“I dessay now,” he said, looking at Darby with simulated admiration, “a chap like you would know every crack in these hills where a man could stow himself. There’s that place—sort o’ cave—up beyond Split-the-Wind now. Know any more like that?”
Darby shook his head.
The trooper tried another tack. “’Course I’m not on duty now,” he said. “Just dropped in in passin’. I wasn’t sorry to be took off that job. I suppose Steve Knight’s well down to the coast by now. He was makin’ for there, wasn’t he?”
“You go to ’Ell,” said Darby, briskly and cheerfully.
“Well, that’s a nice answer to give a civil question,” said the trooper, indignantly. “D’you s’pose Steve ’imself would talk to a man like that?”
Darby wasn’t quite sure if this came under the heading of a question about Steve. He pondered a moment. It might be so.... “You might go to ’Ell,” he said, highly pleased to think of his satisfactory solution of the difficulty. This sort of thing was complicated though, and to stop it he rose and sauntered outside. The trooper walked to the door and sat down where he could keep an eye on him and on Ned Gunliffe, who was talking to Ess at her door.
Ned had seen no sign of Ess when he went out, so he went boldly to the door and knocked.
“I’d just like a word with you, Miss Ess,” he said.