“Lot o’ folks.”
“A lot!” gasped Sam.
“Yep; a lot. Bill Marlow, and your father, and Maggie, and the Major, and you——”
“Me!” In his amazement Sam was careless of grammar. “Me? Why, I never breathed a syllable!”
Lon grinned. “Wal, you wa’n’t exactly chatty; that’s a fact. But I guess ’twas the things you didn’t say that told me most. Same way with your father. Didn’t know, did you, that I saw him one mornin’ swabbin’ out that gun of his? And he hadn’t been huntin’, and he wasn’t goin’ huntin’. Then there was Maggie. One day we was discussin’ your life and public services, and I sorter gloomed about you, and she flew at me like a hen protectin’ her last chick from a hawk; and then I knew well enough you’d been in some particular big scrape, and she knew, or guessed, more or less what ’twas. Then there was the Major——”
“The Major!”
“Sure! ’Nother case of what you might call eloquent silence. When he turned Peter Groche loose, what more did he do? Nothin’! What more did he say? Nothin’! And the Major ain’t the party to let somebody put a few buckshot into him and grin and bear it uncomplainin’. He’d ’a’ railroaded Peter Groche to jail with all the pleasure in life, and he’d ’a’ done the same thing to any other man that played he was an old buck. But the Major’s a good sport, after all; he hates to fuss with anybody that ain’t his size. See where the argyment’s leadin’, don’t you? So, when you ’fessed up——”
“When I ’fessed up!” Sam seemed to be capable of nothing but repetitions.
Lon chuckled a bit complacently. “Wal, Sam, that’s where I’m on dead reckonin’. But when I’d chewed it all over a few times, it struck me that you was jest the kind of a feller to own up when you saw somebody else was in trouble for what you’d done; and that the Major was jest the old hardshell to be tickled by your givin’ a square deal to that miserable critter, Groche. Course, I’ve kept my eyes and ears open, and I’ve been down town nights, and I’ve talked with folks, and I’ve picked up little things here and there that fitted together. And so I got four, not by puttin’ two with two, but by addin’ an eighth, and three-sixteenths, and a half, and three-quarters, and so on and so on. And—wal, that’s about all of that chapter.”
“Lon, you’re a wonder!”