Jim Conley departed after breakfast next morning, with his reduced, high-flavored sack on his shoulder and a reflective and uneasy expression in his close-set eyes. The partners were glad to be rid of him. They discussed him at considerable length. “You scared him,” said Andy—“but I’m thinkin’ ye maybe said a mite too much about who paid for the licker. He don’t look overly smart, but I reckon there’s somethin’ inside his skull, even if it’s only porridge; an’ yer warnin’ was strong enough to start porridge a-bubblin’. We ain’t got anythin’ on him the law kin touch him for, far’s I kin see. It wasn’t him robbed the camp, an’ we can’t swear he was at our traps. You hadn’t ought to give yer suspicions away like that, Young Dan.”
“Maybe yer right,” said Young Dan. “I sure did talk kind of out-an’-out. But what of it? I want to warn him, because he’s got to feed his wife and kids. If he suspicions that we suspicion him of robbing our traps, then he’ll quit. If I was tryin’ to jail him I wouldn’t of talked to him like that. But I was warnin’ him and throwin’ a scare into him to steady him.”
“Ye don’t want to warn a feller like him till after ye catch ’im. He don’t look smart—but ye can’t never tell by looks. He knows as how we suspicion ’im now, and so he’ll do us all the harm he’s able to. I see it in his eye. You had ought to had the goods on ’im before ye warned ’im, Young Dan. Why, we don’t even know where he’s been to—where he traded the skins he took out! An’ we don’t know that he ain’t got a big bunch o’ traps set of his own.”
Young Dan smiled.
“He traded his skins at Bean’s Mill, down at the mouth of Oxbow,” he said. “I guess he didn’t show up at the Bend at all, though Amos Bissing’s store is just as good as Luke Watt’s. He got his tea and tobacco and everything he had in his sack from Luke Watt down to Bean’s Mill; and I guess Luke’s got his skins; and I guess we’ve got his hide, if we want it.”
“Young Dan, yer a smart lad—the smartest I ever see—an’ I won’t say nay to nary a one o’ yer propositions—but it do seem to me ye’re doin’ a powerful lot o’ guessin’ right now.”
“Honest to goodness, Andy, I’m not guessing. Do you know Luke Watt? Have you ever bought goods from him?”
“Sure, I know Luke Watt o’ Bean’s Mill. Yes, I’ve traded with him, too. What of it?”
“Then you know his hand-writing. Uncle Bill Tangier took me down to Bean’s Mill one day two summers ago, and he bought a lot of stuff for me and the youngsters at Watt’s store, and Mr. Watt figgered up the bill on one of the parcels. He has a stiff right wrist, as you know—broke it in the woods when he was a lad and it wasn’t set right. He used his whole arm when he put down the figgers, working from the shoulder like a man sawing a board. I don’t believe there’s another man in the world who writes or makes figgers just like Luke Watt. And here is the paper Jim Conley’s tobacco was wrapped up in. I changed it this morning for another piece of brown paper, before Conley was awake. Here’s the complete bill all figgered out in Luke Watt’s own original big up-an’-down figgers.”
Young Dan unfolded a large, smudged piece of brown paper and passed it to his partner. Andy Mace held it in his two corded hands and stared at it in amazed silence.