There was another thing. Jim imagined Lance felt Evelyn's charm, and although they were cousins, he understood cousins sometimes married, with their relatives' approval, when the marriage would advance the interests of the family. It was possible that he might hurt Lance worse than by robbing him of Langrigg.
Yet Lance had held up the car for him and run some risk of being killed. After all, this did not clash with Jim's notion of his character. Lance might dislike the man he rescued, but he had the instincts of an English gentleman. Then Jim stopped and looked about, for he had reached the thorn hedge.
A belt of peat, checkered by white tufts of wild cotton, ran back from the road, and a wire fence joined the hedge at a right angle. Some of the posts had fallen and lengths of wire lay about. Jim looked at the wire thoughtfully, and then went on to the spot where broken glass and torn up soil marked the scene of the accident. Then he stopped again and lighted his pipe. In the Canadian woods he had now and then trusted to his rifle to supply his food, and tracking large game trains one's observation. One must guess an animal's movements by very small signs. A broken twig or a disturbed stone tells one much. Jim looked for some such clew that might help him, so to speak, to reconstruct the accident.
He remembered a sudden jolt and the front wheels skidding. They had obviously struck something, and when he got the car straight had skidded again the other way. The marks the tires had made indicated this, and he examined the neighboring ground. The silverweed that covered the peaty soil between the road and ditch was not much crushed. He had, as he remembered, not gone far on that side before he, for a moment, recovered control of the car. The real trouble began when it swerved again and ran across the road. Something had caught the wheels and interfered with the steering.
Jim looked for a big stone, but could find none; besides, it was improbable that he had hit the stone twice, and sitting down by the overturned car he thoughtfully finished his pipe. The car must be got out of the ditch, but this was not important, and he dwelt upon the fencing wire; he had a hazy notion that the obstacle he had struck was flexible. By and by he heard a step, and Jake came up.
"I don't know if you ought to be about," the latter said. "It will be an awkward job to get the car into the road."
"I'm not bothering about the car," Jim replied. "I want to find out why she ran into the ditch."
"You don't know, then?"
Jim indicated the wheel-marks and told Jake about the skidding. "She went off at an angle and I couldn't pull her round," he concluded.
"Do you expect to find the steering-gear broken?"