Lon laughed. “Ho-ho! Now we’re gettin’ down to cases. You said, ‘I’m goin’ to lick you,’ and he said, ‘Come on and try it.’ Sam, it’s been a good while since I was a boy, but I guess that’s jest about what I’d ’a’ said to a feller of my own size that promised me a hidin’. And I wouldn’t ’a’ asked a bill o’ particulars.”
Sam took a turn the length of the barn floor and back. Lon certainly was presenting a new aspect of the case, a disturbing aspect, unsettling, destructive of comfortable confidence.
“Look here, Lon! What makes you take sides against me?” the boy asked querulously.
“I don’t,” was the curt reply.
“But——”
“Wal, I’ll explain. First place, such didoes as somebody has been cuttin’ up round here don’t quite fit in with what a feller like this Orkney would be likely to do. Maybe he’s a surly customer, but, after all, he’s had good bringin’ up. Second place, bein’ away from town, he couldn’t have chopped up the harness last night. Third place, I’m gettin’ kind of a hunch that I may be able to dig up a clue or two.”
“Connecting somebody else with the case?” queried Sam incredulously.
“Yep.”
“But who——”
“Don’t ask me that, Sam, till I’ve looked around a bit. If I’m right—well, you’ll say it’s the queerest piece of business you ever heard tell of.”