“You shut up,” the man snarled at him. “I reckon your gun'll tell the story.”
All the men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.
“One shot,” Blackbeard concluded.
Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer's, sniffed at the breech.
“Him one fresh shot,” he said.
“The bullet entered his back,” Smoke said. “He was facing me when he was shot. You see, it came from the other bank.”
Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook his head. “Nope. It won't do. Turn him around to face the other bank—that's how you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an' down the trail, and see if you can see any tracks making for the other bank.”
Their report was that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even a snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the dead man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand. Shredding this, he found imbedded in the center the bullet which had perforated the body. Its nose was spread to the size of a half dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it with a cartridge from Smoke's belt.
“That's plain enough evidence, stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It's soft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-jacketed. It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It's manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company. Now you come along, an' we'll go over to the bank an' see jest how you done it.”
“I was bushwhacked myself,” Smoke said. “Look at the hole in my parka.”