“As soon as you have told the news to your wife we’ll get out there and have a real look for it.”
Mrs. Murphy was as glad as any of them that the thieves had been caught. “Now,” she exclaimed, “maybe Pat will stay home a little of the time. He has been living at that log pond a good part of the time for the past two years.”
“Yes,” Murphy grinned, “and we are going back there again as soon as I fix up this fellow’s throat, which Roberts came so near slitting for him.”
When Scott had a look at himself in the glass he could easily understand why Mrs. Murphy had been so horrified at the first sight of him. The powder from Roberts’ pistol had blackened all one side of his face till he looked like a half-minstrel, and the flesh wound in his neck, which was really a very shallow one, had bled so profusely that his shirt was all stained up.
“Could not look much worse if I had really been murdered,” he laughed, “but that scratch is almost healed up now.”
“That is because you were so close to the gun that the heat fairly cauterized it, but we’ll have to wash it out just the same and put some antiseptic dressing on it. These gunshot wounds are very apt to cause trouble. Seems as though blood poisoning follows them mighty easy.”
Murphy soon applied a simple dressing and they set off for the old log pond, which had now acquired a new interest. The men, who had already heard of Qualley’s arrest, plied them with curious questions, but they put them off by saying that they had orders not to say anything about it.
“The wooziest thing about this,” Murphy explained, as they walked slowly around the log pond, “is that some logs actually went out of here one night while I was here watching them.”
“Were you alone that night, or was Qualley with you?”
“Qualley was there, too, but he was right in sight all the time.”