“Just stopped on my way from Elmville,” came the heavy voice of the visitor. “Couldn’t find out anything about the matter there, and as I was riding back over the mountains I thought I might as well stop on the chance that you might know something about it.”
“Mr. Lane, who brings in our provisions, told me what he’d heard in town,” answered the Chief. “That’s all I know. Wednesday night it happened, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what the coroner thinks. The body wasn’t found till Friday—nobody goes up there, you know, and the old man lived alone. It was just by luck that one of the neighbors stopped in to see him, and found the body.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Sheriff. It’s a terrible thing to have such a murder so near camp. And the old hermit wouldn’t have hurt a fly.”
Sheriff! Murder! Blackie clutched the doorpost and almost fell over at the words. The hermit!
“Well,” said the sheriff, scraping back his chair as he rose, “if you do hear anything, I live over by Newmiln Center. You can send word to me there. It’s a puzzle, sure enough. As brutal a thing as I ever heard of in all my experience; if it was robbers that did it, they surely didn’t find anything.”
“I hope you catch them,” said the Chief fervently. “And I’m sorry I can’t give you any clue. Good day!”
Blackie just had time to collect his thoughts and run away from the door before he might be discovered listening. He dashed off and joined the group about the wrestling-mats, covertly watching the man who came out of the office. The sheriff was a heavy-set, black-mustached man in spurred and muddied riding-boots and glistening slicker. He stamped across to the back door and, while Blackie watched at a window, mounted a waiting horse and cantered off down the muddy road through the downpour.
The watching boy heaved a sigh of relief; he had escaped being caught and questioned. The two tramps must have tried to force the hermit to tell what he knew. The old man, of course, possessed neither a treasure nor the secret of a silver mine, and in the struggle he had somehow been—killed. Murder! What an ugly-sounding word it was! Blackie shivered. He wanted to forget; but he knew that never in this world would he lose the memory of that sullen, threatening house and the racking scream that had issued from it on that fatal Wednesday night.
He looked about him. The rainy-morning program in the lodge was already in full swing. In front of the fireplace Lieutenant Eames had roped off a square space and was giving boxing instruction to an interested group. Two older boys, their fists hidden in bulging padded gloves, were clumsily sparring together under a rapid stream of cautions and advice from the lieutenant and a perfect hail of cheers and urgings from the howling bunch of spectators.