"It warn't," answered Jacob shortly and curtly. "It war a madman."
"A madman! A madman!" The words were bandied from one to another. The listeners looked askance at one another, for madness out on the plains was in those days exceptional, and in nearly every case ended in a terrible tragedy.
"Man or woman?" asked Seth. "Seems either's likely."
"It war the man," said Jacob slowly. "It war the man, a white man, same as you and me. Seems he'd gone suddenly crazy at sight of me, and set to at shootin'. It war his wife's voice I'd heard, her's and her two boys. When I got in to the sorter parlour place in the centre of the shanty, thar she war, with the two young 'uns, holdin' on to the man fer their lives."
"Gee, that war strange!" muttered Steve. "P'raps something outer the ordinary had scared him."
"Or he'd been thinkin' so long about Injuns, and likely attacks, that the thing had kind of got on his mind and unhinged it. I've heard tell of a similar thing afore. A man gets fidgety, specially ef he ain't used to Injuns and the plains, and ain't been brought up to the life. His nerves git shook up, and one fine day, when there ain't no real danger, he takes his own shadow for an enemy, and blazes off with his gun. Often enough it's someone he's most fond of that he shoots."
Tom delivered himself of the statement calmly and slowly. Then he carefully refilled his pipe, while his comrades looked round at one another. Jacob, the slow, ponderous Jacob, who so seldom launched into a tale, had provided the camp with a subject, a riddle, and all struggled to come to a solution.
"It war that, or near it," agreed Tricky Seth.
"Or he'd been ill, and was jumpin' mad in his delirium," suggested another.
"I dunno as you're right or wrong," came slowly from Jacob. "Reckon he war ill, ill with grief and anxiety, and reckon his nerves was fair shook up. He war mad, stark, starin' crazy without a doubt, and we had to make him fast so as he shouldn't do anyone a mischief."