“Heaven!” groaned Donald to himself. “Can anything else come to me?”
A little later, as he looked down upon Angus Fitzpatrick, lying on the bed of boughs, it seemed as though the old man had had a turn for the worse. Donald recalled his grip on that wounded shoulder, and smiled inwardly with pleasure, for his spirit was still bitterly vindictive.
“Really, McTavish,” was the factor's firm greeting, “I never knew any one to come up before me as regularly and for as many varieties of crime as you do. Too bad you don't devote that splendid ingenuity to something worthy.”
Donald smiled pleasantly, and inquired after the injured shoulder, a question that turned the old man's sarcasm into fury, for he had scarcely slept the night before, what with the pain of his wound, and the nervous shock of the day.
“Well,” he snarled to the others, “what brings him here now?”
A spokesman told what had already occurred outside, and Fitzpatrick listened intently. With a few rapid questions, he made certain that Indian Tom could not have perpetrated the deed himself, either purposely or accidentally. Then, he turned to the accused.
“Just where were you when you heard the shot, as you claim?” he inquired, curtly.
Donald declared he had been at the edge of the camp, naming a certain spot, and the man who had found the body identified the place as well within gun-shot of the scene of the tragedy.
“Do you believe,” Fitzpatrick asked the hunter, “that a shot from the tree where McTavish was could have reached and killed Indian Tom?
“There's no doubt of it, sir.”