The day was gray. The air was still, so still. It reeked with the taint of burning. It reeked with something else. There were bodies, in varying stages of decomposition, lying about, many of them burned, many of them half eaten by the wild scavengers of the region. All were mutilated in a dreadful manner. And they were mostly the bodies of women and children.
Not a teepee remained standing. The mud walls of one or two huts still stood up. But all of them that were destructible had been devoured by hungry flames.
After half an hour's search the two white men came to the edge of the burnt-out forest. They paused, and John Kars' eyes searched amongst the charred poles. Presently he shrugged his shoulders.
"No use going up this way. We can't learn more than we've read right here. It's the work of the Bell River outfit, sure. That's if the things we've heard are true." He turned to his companion. "Say, Bill, it makes you wonder. What 'bug' is it sets folk yearning to get out and kill, and burn, all the time? Think of it. Just think if you and me started right in to holler, an' shoot, an' burn. What would you say? We're crazy, sure. Yet these folk aren't crazy. They're just the same as they were born, I guess. They weren't born crazy, any more than we were. It gets me beat. Beat to death."
Bill Brudenell was overshadowed in stature by his friend. But his wit was as keen. His mental faculties perhaps more mature. He might not have been able to compete with John Kars in physical effort, but he possessed a ripe philosophy, and a wonderful knowledge of human nature.
"The craziest have motives," he said, with a whimsical smile in his twinkling eyes. "I've often noticed that folk who act queer, and are said to be crazy, and maybe get shut up in the foolish-house, generally have an elegant reason of their own for acting the way they do. Maybe other folks can't get it right. I once had to do with a case in which a feller shot up his mother, and was made out 'bug,' and was put away. It worried me some. Later I found his ma made his life miserable. He lived in terror of her. She'd broken bottles over his head. She'd soused him with boiling water. She'd raised the devil generally, till—well, till he reached the limit. Then I found she acted that way because her dandy boy was sparking around some tow-headed female, and guessed he intended marrying her, and setting her to run the home his mother had always run for him. There's some sort of reason to most crazy acts. Guess we'll need to chase up the Bell River outfit if we're looking for the reason to this craziness."
"Yes."
Bill turned away and picked up a stained and rusted hatchet of obviously Indian make. He examined it closely. John Kars stared about him with brooding eyes.
"What do you think lies back of this?" he inquired presently. His manner was abstracted, and his eyes were watching the movements of the third figure in the distance.
Bill glanced at him out of the corners of his eyes. It was a swift, speculating glance. Then he continued his examination of the hatchet, while he talked.