“Why, Hill, the whole town would laugh at us. We certainly could not detain them without evidence. Besides, your suspicions are groundless. Mrs. Magruder told me last evening that she did not expect her husband for ten or twelve days. Let matters rest for the present.”
“I know that Magruder is dead, and that these villains killed him, as well as if I had seen it done,” rejoined Beachy. “From this time forth, I am on their track.”
Bidding the judge good-night, he wended his way home, and, on entering his house, held the conversation with his wife with which this chapter opens.
CHAPTER XXXIII
HILL BEACHY
Mr. Beachy’s convictions gave him no rest. Without a shadow of evidence to sustain him, or a clew to guide him, he went to work to ferret out the crime. His friends laughed at and discouraged him. The roughs of Lewiston threatened him. A few charitably attributed his conduct to mental derangement. The face of every person he met wore a quizzical expression, which seemed to imply both pity and ridicule. Often, when thwarted, he half resolved to abandon the pursuit, but a voice within whispered him on with assurance of success, and he could not, if he would, recede. Three days were spent in a fruitless search for the animals which he knew must have borne the men to town. At the close of the third day a party arrived from Bannack. The first inquiry he addressed to them after the usual salutation was,
“Where is Magruder?”
“Hasn’t he arrived?” was the surprised rejoinder. “He left four days before us, intending to come through as quickly as possible.”
Beachy heard no more.
“He is dead,” said he, “and I know the murderers.”
“Tut, tut, Hill, you’re too fast. He has probably gone around by Salt Lake. He’ll be in all safe in a few days.”