“Hot agin—ain't it?” said the other.
The squire allowed that it was, for a fact, mighty hot. Commonplaces of gossip followed this—county politics and a neighbor's wife sick of breakbone fever down the road a piece. The subject of crops succeeded inevitably. The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly he regretted it, for the other man, who was by way of being a weather wiseacre, cocked his head aloft to study the sky for any signs of clouds.
“Wonder whut all them buzzards are doin' yonder, squire,” he said, pointing upward with his whipstock.
“Whut buzzards—where?” asked the squire with an elaborate note of carelessness in his voice.
“Right yonder, over Little Niggerwool—see 'em there?”
“Oh, yes,” the squire made answer. “Now I see 'em. They ain't doin' nothin', I reckin—jest flyin' round same as they always do in clear weather.”
“Must be somethin' dead over there!” speculated the man in the buggy.
“A hawg probably,” said the squire promptly—almost too promptly. “There's likely to be hawgs usin' in Niggerwool. Bristow, over on the other side from here—he's got a big drove of hawgs.”
“Well, mebbe so,” said the man; “but hawgs is a heap more apt to be feedin' on high ground, seems like to me. Well, I'll be gittin' along towards town. G'day, squire.” And he slapped the lines down on the mare's flank and jogged off through the dust.
He could not have suspected anything—that man couldn't. As the squire turned away from the road and headed for his house he congratulated himself upon that stroke of his in bringing in Bristow's hogs; and yet there remained this disquieting note in the situation, that buzzards flying, and especially buzzards flying over Little Niggerwool, made people curious—made them ask questions.