The shrill cry startled the entire camp, and all eyes were turned toward the trembling man. Paul Chicot was the first to speak, in an angry tone:
"What the devil's the matter wi' ye now, I'd like to ax? See'd another snake, eh?" he asked, sarcastically.
"It's murther, that's what it is! He's kilt—kilt intirely!" gasped Dooley, his eyes still glaring toward the quiet tent, as if enchanted by the horrible object lying so still and ghastly within.
"Who's kilt—not Dutchy?" quietly demanded Upshur, stepping forward.
Chicot, giving over all idea of getting any thing satisfactory out of the stupefied Irishman, sprung forward and flung aside the strip of canvas that protected the entrance. One glance told him the truth. Tim was right. Murder had been done!
Lying upon a couple of blankets, was all that remained of their quaint, pleasant comrade, Carl Hefler, or "Dutchy," the sobriquet suggested by his broken, stammering speech.
The long, slim figure lay at full length, as though peacefully slumbering, but the arms were flung wide, the long, bony fingers clutched as though in agony. An agonized expression had frozen upon the thin, pallid face.
On the white shirt-bosom was a great stain—a stain of that peculiar, unmistakable color that seldom requires a second glance to designate. Directly above the heart the stain was blackest. There the blow had been dealt.
Chicot, old and thoroughly versed in that art peculiar to his craft and the detectives—of remarking everything—knew that no feeble, faltering hand had dealt this blow. Either the hand of an unusually bold and cool-headed man, or else that of one to whom such deeds had been familiar.
He knew that the murderer had crept fairly into the tent, had glided close to the victim, as he lay buried in unconscious slumber, and that he must have even felt out the region of the heart, since all within had been dark, else the blow could never have been delivered with such deadly precision.