Who could have cut the rope? Himself? Impossible! Where was the hand to have done it? He had none to spare for such a purpose. Happy for them to have thought that he had.
They skulk around the glade to get nearer, still going by stealth, and in silence. The buzzards perceive them, and though dull birds, reluctant to leave their foul feast, they fly up with a fright. Something in the air of the two stalkers seemed to startle them, as if they too knew them to have been guilty of a crime.
“Yes, the rope’s been cut, that’s sartin,” says Buck, us they stand under it. “A clean wheep o’ a knife blade. Who the divvel cud a done it?”
“I can’t think,” answers the young planter, reflecting. “As like as not old Jerry Rook, or it might have been a stray traveller.”
“Whoever it was, I hope the cuss came in time; if not—”
“If not, we’re in for it. Bless’d if I wouldn’t liked it better to’ve found him hanging; there might have been some chance of hiding him out of the way. But now, if he’s been dropped upon dead, we’re done for. Whoever found him will know all about it. Lena Rook knew we were here, and her sweet lips can’t be shut, I suppose. If’t had been only Rook himself, the old scoundrel, there might have been a chance. Money would go a long ways with him; and I’m prepared—so would we all be—to buy his silence.”
“Lucky you riddy for that, Mister Alfred Brandon. That’s jest what Rook, ‘the old scoundrel,’ wants, and jess the very thing he means to insist upon hevin’. Now name your price.”
If a dead body had dropped down from the branch above them it could not have startled the two culprits more than did the living form of Jerry Rook, as it came gliding out of the thick cane close by the stem of the tree.
“You, Jerry Rook!” exclaim both together, and in a tone that came trembling through their teeth. “You here?”
“I’m hyar, gentlemen; an’ jess in time, seeing as ye wanted me. Now, name yur price; or, shall I fix it for ye? ’Tain’t no use ’fectin’ innercence o’ what I mean; ye both know cleer enuf, an’ so do this chile, all ’beout it. Ye’ve hanged young Pierre Robideau, as lived with me at my shanty.”