“Esther B’s?”
“If I can find it.”
“I don’t believe there’s any such one there. That’s why you’re afraid you can’t find it. I bet you know a real girl by that name.” A pause. “Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. We’ll carve our own initials away out on the ledge, hey?” Tom said. “Farther than any of the others—away, way out at the end of the trail. Hey?”
“Oh let’s,” said Audry....
CHAPTER XXXIX
“HERE’S LUCK”
By evening the country knew the whole extraordinary story and only a legal formality was necessary officially to clear Anson Dyker of the stigma and peril which he had known for fifteen years. His rash flight in boyish panic so long ago had taken him to South America, and when he had wandered back, the courage to go and give himself up was lacking.
He told Tom these things as they hiked down to Mead’s whence they rode to West Hurley station and caught the train into Kingston. Here they waited for the West Shore train to Catskill.
He had been all over the country since the murder, worked in a mining camp in the West, in a lumber camp in Michigan. He had been as far as the islands of the south Pacific in his lonely wanderings. The recurrent resolve to return and give himself up had ebbed away as the crime became a dead letter.