“Was—was anything said in his presence about Willis's death that you remember of?” the storekeeper pursued, with the skill of a legal crossexaminer, while the listeners stared, their cuds of tobacco compressed between their grinders.
Purdy's face had grown rigid, almost as that of an important witness on the stand in court. “I can't just remember,” he said. “There was so much talk about it on all sides that day. Oh yes—now I recall that—well, you see we was all at my house, eager for news, and it struck me, you know, as if Dwight wasn't as anxious to talk as the rest—in fact, it looked like he sorter wanted to change the subject.”
“Oh!” The exclamation was breathed simultaneously from several mouths.
“Of course, neighbors,” Purdy began, in alarm, “don't understand me for one minute to—” But he broke off, for Dilk had something else to observe.
“Them two men was at dagger's-p'ints, I've heard,” he declared. “Friends on both sides was movin' heaven an' earth to keep 'em apart. Now if Dwight did take that long, roundabout road from Darley to Springtown, why, they didn't meet. But ef Dwight went the way he always has tuck, an' I've seed 'im out this way often enough, why—” Dilk raised his hands and held them poised significantly in mid-air.
“But the coroner's jury found,” said Purdy, “that Willis was shootin' at a target he'd stuck up on a tree with his own knife, an' that his young hoss was skittish, an'—”
“All the better proof of bad blood betwixt 'em,” burst from a farmer on a nail-keg. “The truth is, some hold now that Willis was out practising so he could wing that particular game. The only thing I see agin what you-uns seem to think is that it's been kept quiet. Dwight is a lawyer an' knows the law, an' he wouldn't cover a thing like that up when all he'd have to do would be to establish proof that it was done in self-defence an' git his walking-papers.”
“Thar you are!” Dilk said, in a voice that rang with conviction; “but suppose one thing—suppose this. Suppose the provocation wasn't exactly strong enough to quite justify killing. Suppose Dwight, made mad by all he'd heard, drawed an' fired without due warning, and suppose while he was thar in that quiet spot he had time to think it all over and decided that he'd stand a better chance of escape by not bein' known in the matter. A body never can tell. You kin bet your boots if Dwight did kill 'im an' hid the fact, he had ample legal reasons fer not wantin' to be mixed up in it.”
The seed was sown, and upon soil well suited to rapid germination and growth. By the next day the noxious weed had its head well above the ground, and, like the crab-grass the farmers knew to be so tenaciously prolific, it was spreading rapidly.