He leaned over Luke Watt and shook him roughly by a shoulder.
“Where’d you bank your money?” he asked.
“I didn’t bank it nowhere,” mumbled Watt, still with his face in his hands. “She didn’t bank it, neither. She salted it away.”
“Where’d she salt it away?”
“I dunno.”
“You’re lying, Luke Watt—or you’re the biggest an’ softest boob I ever heard tell of.”
“I’ll bet she kept it somewhere in the dresser in the kitchen,” said Young Dan. “That’s where the tracks led to—to the dresser and out again.”
The storekeeper jumped to his feet and ran heavily from the room, crying “Let’s go look.” The others followed him close.
Young Dan took charge of the investigation of the dresser. All the dishes were removed from the shelves and every inch of woodwork was searched for a hidden drawer or sliding panel—but all in vain. Luke Watt sat down beside the stove and shivered and wept. Then Young Dan and Mr. Wallace emptied the four pot-closets in the bottom of the dresser of dozens of pots, pans, sauce-pans and frying-pans, and Young Dan crawled into each in turn and rapped here and there and everywhere with enquiring knuckles. In the fourth closet he found his reward. Without withdrawing his head he passed back and out a section of the bottom of the closet. Mr. Wallace took the piece of dry pine board in his hand and showed it to Luke Watt. Luke stared at it and ceased his weeping. Then a section of board from the floor of the kitchen appeared from beneath the trapper’s elbow. He withdrew his head and shoulders from the closet a few seconds later and squatted back on his heels.
“Empty,” he said.