“It has happened quite a few times,” said the latter. “We don’t turn any stranger out in this country.”
“Of course!” said the Sergeant gravely, though he felt a little thrill of content as he saw the shot, he had been by no means sure of, had told. “That man, however, had lost his horse in the river, and it was the one he got from you that took him out of the country. Now, if we could show you knew what he had done, it might go as far as hanging somebody.”
The man was evidently not a confirmed law-breaker, but merely one of the small farmers who were willing to pick up a few dollars by assisting the whisky-runners now and then, and he abandoned all resistance.
“Sergeant,” he said, “it was most a week before I knew, and if anybody had told me at the time I’d have turned him out to freeze before I’d have let him have a horse of mine.”
“That wouldn’t go very far if we brought the charge against you,” said Stimson grimly. “If you’d sent us word when you did know, we’d have had him.”
“Well,” said the man, “he was across the frontier by that time, and I don’t know that most folks would have done it, if they’d had the warning the boys sent me.”
Stimson appeared to consider for almost a minute, and then gravely rapped his companion’s arm.
“It seems to me that the sooner you and I have an understanding, the better it will be for you,” he said.
They were some time arriving at it, and the Sergeant’s superiors might not have been pleased with all he promised during the discussion. Still, he was flying at higher game and had to sacrifice a little, while he knew his man.
“We’ll fix it up without you, as far as we can; but if we want you to give evidence that the man who lost his horse in the river was not Farmer Witham, we’ll know where to find you,” he said. “You’ll have to take your chance of being tried with him, if we find you trying to get out of the country.”