Just before dark Jack was greatly interested in seeing a procession of five pin-tailed ducks walking solemnly from a little slough to the house. When they reached it the woman drove them into a little coop built of short logs, and closing the door, fastened it with a pin.
“Where did you get your ducks, Froggy?” asked Joe.
“Oh,” answered Froggy, “I found a nest out on the prairie at the edge of the slough and watched it until the young ones hatched and then got them and brought them in and raised them. I did have nine, but the coyotes and foxes got away with all but these five. Now I’ve got ’em trained so that they come up every night, and I shut them up in the house where they’ll be safe.”
Shortly after they had started next morning Jack asked Hugh some questions about Froggy. It appeared that he had come into the country twelve or fifteen years before and had worked first as a laborer and afterward as a clerk for small individual traders.
“They say,” put in Joe, “that he has killed two or three men for their money.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I heard something about that, but nobody that ever talked to me about it really seemed to know anything.”
“No,” said Joe, “I reckon they never could prove anything against him. Twice men who were traveling through the country and were supposed to have money disappeared on this road and nobody ever knew what became of them. Each time Froggy said that they stopped at his house over night and then started on in the morning, but they never were seen again.”
“Well,” said Hugh, “we don’t know anything about that.”
“Hugh,” said Jack, “I’ve been a good deal in the Western country and I’m not a pilgrim any longer, but isn’t something going to happen to Froggy some of these days?”
“Why, yes, son,” said Hugh, “I reckon some day that somebody will up and kill Froggy, and then the country will be better off; but it isn’t your funeral nor yet mine, and we don’t want to mix up with things that don’t concern us at all.”