“You'll think it's news when you hear it,” the stable-man said, taking off his hat and mopping his hot brow with a soiled handkerchief. “Cap, the last thing me or you could possibly expect has done happened. The sheriff of Canton County has just telegraphed that he's got the man that killed old Rose.”
“Got the man that—bosh! Why we—” The words fell from Hoag's lips like bits of metal, and he broke off with a low oath. For a moment neither he nor Trawley spoke. Hoag laughed defiantly, mechanically, and without mirth. Then his face glowed faintly. “Oh, I see, the sheriff over thar don't know what—what took place here last night. He's nabbed some triflin' nigger that had a suspicious look, an' is holdin' 'im for—”
“'Twasn't no nigger,” Trawley said. “It is a tramp—a white man that the sheriff says passed Rose's farm yesterday afoot.”
“Well, what o' that?” Hoag showed irritability. “We'll have to wire the sheriff to turn the man loose—that's all—that's all!”
“If that was all, it would be easy; but it ain't, by a long shot,” Trawley sniffed. “The tramp had Rose's old silver watch with his name cut on it!”
“You mean—” But Hoag knew well what he meant, and was in no mood for idle remarks. When thwarted in anything, justly or unjustly, he became angry; he felt his rage rising now over his sheer inability to cope with a situation which certainly demanded all his poise, all his mental forces.
“We are simply in a hole,” Trawley muttered, still wiping the sweat from his brow. “In a hole, an' a deep one at that.”
“What makes you think so?” Hoag was glaring into the eyes of his companion, as a man in dense darkness trying to see.
“Because we are,” Trawley answered. “The sheriff over thar in Canton won't want to admit he's made a mistake with the proof he holds. He'll bring his man to trial an' the fellow will be convicted. The fact that we—that us boys in this county strung up a nigger for the crime won't make any difference over thar, but it will make a lot here.”
“I don't see how.”