The partners denied the implication stoutly. Their denials and protestations were so emphatic, that neither Corporal Rand nor the boys could believe that they spoke anything but the truth.
“And this was all you found?” Rand continued his questioning.
“Nothin’ else,” grunted the big man. “There wasn’t even a pocket knife or a comb or a watch, or anything like that. His pockets was absolutely empty.”
The sight of the moose-hide pouch had produced a strange effect upon Dick. His eyes kept returning again and again to the mysterious object Rand still held carelessly in one hand. Improbable as it seemed, Dick could not shake off the belief that the poke was the same one that had been taken forcibly from Creel the night before. He wondered what the old recluse thought about it all. Turning his head, he glanced sharply in his direction.
To his surprise, Creel sat unmoved, apparently uninterested. His round, staring eyes, which somehow reminded one of those of a cat, were set in a fixed stare. Occasionally, Creel’s long hand stole to his bandaged head. It was evident that nothing was to be gained here. Then Dick became conscious of a question that Rand had just asked the two men:
“You found the body along the trail, twenty miles from here. Deer Lick Springs is only ten miles farther on. What motive prompted you to return here? Wouldn’t it have been much easier to go on to your destination?”
“We thought about that,” the little man answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Burnnel an’ me we talked that over when we was standin’ lookin’ down at that man’s body. I was fer goin’ on tuh the Springs, but Burnnel he says no. Wouldn’t hear to it. He insists on comin’ back all this way tuh Frenchie’s stoppin’-place.”
“Why?” asked the policeman, turning upon Burnnel.
The big man drew a deep breath before he answered.
“It’s like this, corporal,” he finally declared. “Yuh see I had a notion that I had seen that man before. He looked like somebody I knowed what lives over this way. I wa’n’t sure, o’ course, but I had a suspicion. It sort o’ bothered me. I says to Emery: ‘We’ll go back an’ find out.’”