“No matter what I said then, Joe; what I now say to you and Menard is the truth. You have promised to keep what I am about to tell you a secret, and to act according to my advice. Menard, Blakesly, Arthur Pearson has been foully murdered!”
“No!”
“Parks, you are mad!”
“You will believe the evidence of your own senses, boys. I am going to prove what I assert.”
“But who? how?—”
“Who?—ah, that’s the question! There are ten men of us; if the guilty party belongs to our train, we will ferret him out if possible. If we were to gather all our party here, and show them how poor Pearson met his death, the assassin, if he is among us, would be warned, and perhaps escape.”
“True.”
“Boys, I believe that the assassin is among us; but I have not the faintest suspicion as to his identity. We are ten men brought together by circumstances. We three have known each other back there in the mining camps. The others are acquaintances of the road; good fellows so far as we know them: but nine of us ten are innocent men; one is a murderer! Come, now, and let me prove what I am saying.”
As men who feel themselves dreaming; silently, slowly, with anxious faces, they follow their leader to the wagon where the dead man lies alone.
“Get into the wagon, boys; here, at this end, and move softly.”