“Nothing out of the way,” returned McAllister.
“Well, we’re looking for Richard Sherwood from French River,” said the other. “He cleared out a couple of weeks ago an’ took his little girl with him. She’s gone too, anyhow. I heard he used to be a friend of the folks living here, so I come to ask if you’d seen him in the last two weeks. I didn’t come to set yer darned stable afire.”
“No, we haven’t seen Sherwood,” replied McAllister. “What’s the trouble? Has he taken to poaching again?”
“It’s worse than poaching, this time. I was up on French River ten days ago, taking a look over the salmon pools and one thing an’ another, to see if the game wardens were onto their job, an’ darn it all if I didn’t trip over a bran’ new grave in a little clearing. There’s an old Injun who calls himself Noel Sabattis lives there, an’ he told me he’d buried a dead man there a few days ago. I asked questions and he answered them; and then he helped me dig—and there was a man who’d been shot through the heart!”
“You don’t say!” exclaimed McAllister. “Who was he?”
“Louis Balenger.”
“Balenger? What would bring him back, I wonder? What else did you find out?”
“Nothing. We’re looking for Richard Sherwood.”
“What has he ever done that would lead you to suspect him of a thing like that? I used to know him and he was no more the kind to kill a man than I am. Did the old Injun say Sherwood did it?”
“No, not him. He wouldn’t say a word against Sherwood. But he don’t matter much, one way or the other, old Noel Sabattis! He ain’t all there, I guess. He says he found Balenger in Sherwood’s pirogue, dead, when Sherwood and the little girl were off trout fishing. When Sherwood come back he helped Noel dig the grave; and next day he lit out and took the girl with him—so that Injun says.”