I wanted to cut across the cornfield to the hill and go home that way, so that if anybody saw us they'd think we had been up in the woods and not near the shanty boat, but Swatty said that wouldn't do because our footprints would show in the cornfield, and detectives would trace us by them if they started out to find who murdered the man. He said it would be more innocent to go right down the railroad track, and if anybody asked us anything to say we hadn't been as far up as the shanty boat, and that Bony had got a stomach ache or something and gone home first with the boat. So we did that. We walked down the track. We talked about the murder all the time, and the more we talked the surer we were nobody would think we did it.
Well, we got to my gate all right, and Swatty and me crossed our hearts we wouldn't say anything about killing the man, and I tried to think how I'd act so nobody at home would think anything different than they always did, and I went into the house. It was pretty late. They were eating supper. So I went in and sat down, and Father scolded me a little for being late, like he does nearly every day, and then he said something else.
“Son,” he said, “after supper you'll get that target rifle of yours and turn it over to me.”
Well, I almost jumped out of my skin, I was so scared.
“Now, you needn't begin any of that,” he said. “I mean what I say. Do you know who was shot today?”
I was so scared I couldn't swallow my piece of meat. I choked on it.
“No, sir!” I said, pretty weakly.
“Well, Benny Judge shot his little sister,” said my father. “Only by the greatest luck she wasn't killed. As it is she has a bullet in her arm. Now, mind! I want that rifle.”
Well, I was glad and I was scared stiff, too.
I had left the target rifle on the rocks up by the shanty boat. I began to shake again because I knew somebody would find the target rifle and it had my initials on it, and when they found the dead man they would know I killed him. I guess my teeth chattered. Anyway I couldn't think of anything at all. I just wished I was dead, because after supper Father would want the rifle, and I didn't have it, and some one would find it and I would be hung.