In another moment a party of miners broke through the underwood, talking loudly, but they dropped their voices to a whisper on beholding the dead body.
“Whist, boys,” said Larry, holding up his hand. “We’ve jist got hold o’ the bullet. It’s flattened the least thing, but the size is easy to see. There’s a wound over the heart, too, made with a knife; now that’s wot I want to get at the bottom of, but I don’t like to use me own knife to cut down.”
As none of the others felt disposed to lend their knives for such a purpose, they looked at each other in silence.
“Mayhap,” said the rough-looking miner who had been hailed by McLeod as Webster—“mayhap the knife o’ the corpse is lyin’ about.”
The suggestion was a happy one. After a few minutes’ search the rusty knife of the murdered man was discovered, and with this Larry succeeded in extracting from the wound over the heart of the body a piece of steel, which had evidently been broken off the point of the knife with which the poor wretch had been slain. Larry held it up with a look of triumph.
“I’ll soon shew ye who’s the murderer now, boys, av ye’ll help me to fill up the grave.”
This was speedily accomplished; then the miners, hurrying in silence from the spot, proceeded to the chief hotel of the place, in the gambling-saloon of which they found the man Smith, alias Black Jim, surrounded by gamblers, and sitting on a corner of the monte table watching the game. Larry went up to him at once, and, seizing him by the collar, exclaimed—“I’ve got ye, have I, ye murderer, ye black villain! Come along wid ye, and git yer desarts—call a coort, boys, an’ sot up Judge Lynch.”
Instantly the saloon was in an uproar. Smith turned pale as death for a moment, but the blood returned with violence to his brazen forehead; he seized Larry by the throat, and a deadly struggle would speedily have taken place between the two powerful men had not Ned Sinton entered at the moment, and, grasping Smith’s arms in his Herculean gripe, rendered him helpless.
“What, comrades,” cried Black Jim, with an oath, and looking fiercely round, “will ye see a messmate treated like this? I’m no murderer, an’ I defy any one to prove it.”
There was a move among the miners, and a voice was heard to speak of rescuing the prisoner.