"The stranger's right, Sam," spoke a handsome, blond-haired chap whose look of intelligence recommended him to Seymour as above average. "You haven't any call to arrest him just because he happened along a public trail at an unlucky moment. Far as that goes, you might better arrest yourself."
"What you driving at, Phil Brewster?" demanded Hardley, breaking away from the stranger's gaze and turning on his fellow townsman. "Are you hinting that I had any hand in sending 'West' one of his majesty's officers?"
"You was jealous of him," put in an old man with a twisted face; the driver of the oxen, if one could judge from the goad upon which he leaned.
"And sore as a pup when you found he had been here a month without your suspicioning," contributed another townsman.
Evidently Hardley was not surrounded by any picked posse and was none too much respected as the peace officer of the community.
Relieved to be out of the calcium, at least for the moment, Seymour swung from his horse and crossed the road to look at the body of Bart, the natural move had he really been stranger to the tragedy.
The deputy chose to ignore the jibes of his neighbors. But he renewed his demands upon Brewster for an interpretation of his insinuations, reminding him he was no "bohunk freighter" to be talked to as an ox.
"Oh, I don't think for a minute that you kicked off the staff sergeant," the handsome chap began to explain. To the real Seymour, listening, came a creepy feeling at the use of his name in such a connection. "I was just using you as an example to show your hasty methods with this stranger," Brewster went on. "You were sitting in your saddle and staring down at the remains when I rode up from the creeks. But I didn't suspect you of firing the shot or even of knowing anything about it."
Hardley looked somewhat mollified.
"But Sam was jealous," persisted the ox-driver.