We regret to record the death of our esteemed fellow citizen William Thornton, due to an accident which occurred Thursday night while on his way home after an evening spent down town. It appears that Mr. Thornton must have strayed from the path in the darkness of the gulch and fallen down a deserted prospect hole. His head struck the rocks below and death was probably instantaneous. His body was discovered there next morning by Jim Simpkins who works a claim near by.
Thornton was one of the first settlers at Austin and has lived here ever since. He was an eccentric character and had become an institution of the town. His brother Willis Thornton, the well-known prospector called Singlefoot Bill, died last June, it will be recalled.
Hugh read the last sentence a second and a third time.
“His brother Willis Thornton, the well-known prospector called Singlefoot Bill, died last June . . .”
Either the reporter was in error or Hugh had stumbled on a fact of prime importance, one that knocked the props out from under the whole Dodson case. For if Singlefoot Bill was Willis and not William, and if he had died in June and not in August, then he could not have relinquished his claim to the Dodsons on July 29th of the same year. The claimants must either have bought from “Chug” Thornton instead of Singlefoot, or else the paper was a forgery pure and simple. One phrase of the document stuck in Hugh’s memory. The conveyor of the property had been referred to as “William Thornton, known as Singlefoot Bill.” But surely “Chug” Thornton, before signing so important a paper, would have corrected an error so flagrant as a reference to himself as Singlefoot Bill. The fact that this mistake in identity had been allowed to stand pointed to forgery. Probably the Dodsons had learned the date of William Thornton’s death, had never heard of his brother, and had jumped to the conclusion, just as Browning and Hugh had done, that he was the old prospector who had worked Bald Knob.
All of which reasoning was based on the hypothesis that the story he had just read was true as to facts. Hugh proceeded to run it down. He looked over the June files of the paper and found the obit of Willis Thornton. At least three times in the story he was referred to as Singlefoot. It even mentioned the fact that he had prospected for years at Piodie.
From the newspaper office Hugh went to the undertaker. That gentleman was drowning his sorrows at the Mammoth, but he was one of that class of drinkers whose mind is clear only when he has had a few drinks.
“Don’t remember which was Willis and which William,” he told Hugh, “but I know I buried Singlefoot in June and Chug in August. Whyn’t you go out to the graveyard an’ look up the tombstones?”
“That’s good advice. I’ll take it.”
Hugh wandered through the bleak graveyard perched on the side of a hill across which the wind always seemed to sweep. He found the graves of the brothers, and above each a clapboard upon which had been lettered their names, cognomens, and the dates of their deaths. These, too, confirmed what he had learned from the paper and from the undertaker.