Tom rowed for the shore after finding the man’s body.
The port-holes of the Goodfellow were golden in the moonlight. The sordid, makeshift camp in the cabin must be bathed in the moonlight now, he thought. As he gazed back at the little cruiser it was hard to believe that in her cosy cabin, death, solemn, unexplained, held her solitary vigil.
CHAPTER XXXV
LAST WORDS
It was in the light of a store window in Catskill that he read hurriedly the few pages which he had found in the cabin of the Goodfellow. The first three or four were written in a firm hand, the rest were scrawled, and evidently written under stress. The writing had been left unfinished. He could hardly credit his senses as he read:
“As long as I can’t do what I intended or get away from here I might as well confess. I would of confessed long ago to clear an innocent man only I heard he was killed in the war and charges against him can’t hurt him. I want to say I tried to go to but they wouldn’t take me on account of my hart. I tried in Denver. I killed Henry Merrick in 1908. It wasn’t Anson Dyker. First he told me how he hated Merrick that was the day him and me tramped up Overlook Mountain we were pals. He says he would kill Merrick for what he was going to do if he done it the next year when they would be clearing the valley. I says he better look out how he talked. He says he would do it anyway and I says yes you will you talk big.
The day Uncle Caleb sent him to pay old Merrick in Kingston I was just out of Elmira a week and I was shuting craps with coreys farmhand near his house so he asks me to go with him to Kingston to the old mans and I says no I wouldn’t. Anyways I follered him. I knowed he had over a hundred dollars. I caught up with him an I says tell your granfather yer lost it an we’ll go out west I dare you. He says no he wouldn so I follers him and went in the cellar way of Merricks by the window that was busted. It was all in the bushes like. I hered him payin Merrick upstairs and he gives Merrick the devil talkin like a regler kid. He got so mad when he couldn get out the kitchen door he climed out the winder then I went up and soked old Merrick with the iron and took the money that was in a onvelop and a tin box to. There was papers I didn know how I culd get money on them so I buried them in our old well in West Hurley. Anyways I had near two thousand ter go out west with en I sends money back sos they’ll think im all right and workin. I sends my mother five hundred. She thot I was married en working en everything.
Las year I was took sick with my hart en couldn work no more en I was in hard luck. I reads in a paper how old Hurley is all so yer can see it in dry weather en I come east ter get the papers I left in the well sos I could turn em inter money, but thats all bunk anyways it ain’t dry long enough for the old village ter show yet. I waited all this time en go there every night till I get sick. Now its a month it ain’t rained en nothing doing yer cant see a thing so I says its all bunk.
When I didn have no more money left I come here. I guess Im a goner now I have to spells yesterday. I couldn go ashore since the first one I had while I was swimming out but that wasn much. Now I got em all the time anyways the game is up but if anybody says Im lying they can see fer thereselves what I hid if it ever gets dry enough.