The two hunters, “prospecting” apart, found the boots thickly coated with mud, concealed under a brush pile, at the bottom of the peach orchard. Even the sheriff does not know what bulges out the coat-skirts of the two backwoodsmen.
Nor is he told there or then. Sime has an object in keeping that secret to himself and his companion; he will only reveal it, when the time comes to make it more available.
The affair of the arrest and subsequent action over, the sheriff and his party retire from the plantation of Ephraim Darke, leaving its owner in a state of frenzied bewilderment.
They go direct to Mrs Clancy’s cottage; not to stay there, but as a starting point, to resume the search for the body of her son, adjourned since yester-eve.
They do not tell her of Dick Darke’s arrest. She is inside her chamber—on her couch—so prostrated by the calamity already known to her, they fear referring to it.
The doctor in attendance tells them, that any further revelation concerning the sad event may prove fatal to her.
Again her neighbours, now in greater number, go off to the woods, some afoot, others on horseback. As on the day preceding, they divide into different parties, and scatter in diverse directions. Though not till after all have revisited the ensanguined spot under the cypress, and renewed their scrutiny of the stains. Darker than on the day before, they now look more like ink than blood!
The cypress knee, out of which Woodley and Heywood “gouged” the smooth-bore bullet, is also examined, its position noted. Attempts are made to draw inferences therefrom, though with but indifferent success. True, it tells a tale; and, judging by the blood around the bullet-hole, which all of them have seen, a tragic one, though it cannot of itself give the interpretation.
A few linger around the place, now tracked and trodden hard by their going and coming feet. The larger number proceeds upon the search, in scattered parties of six or eight each, carrying it for as many miles around.
They pole and drag the creek near by, as others at a greater distance; penetrate the swamp as far as possible, or likely that a dead body might be carried for concealment. In its dim recesses they discover no body, living or dead, no trace of human being, nought save the solitude-loving heron, the snake-bird, and scaly alligator.