“Then he’s crazy!”
“Not quite that. But he ain’t what folks call normal. Oh, I know the breed!”
Sam racked his memory. “You mean he’s a—a degenerate?” he queried.
“That’s the ticket! He’s like pizen ivy: he began by bein’ no good, and he’s got wuss and more of a nuisance the more he spreads out.”
Sam shook his head doubtfully. “All the same, I don’t follow your argument, Lon. If there’s anything to it, we’d have to figure that Peter had some cause to suppose I was in the scrape; for we might as well drop the notion that, all of a sudden, he’d begin to persecute me, unless he had some tip. But I’ve told you I’m sure nobody gave him one. And as I didn’t see him in the woods, he wouldn’t have seen me there.”
“You can’t prove that,” Lon declared. “He’s an old hand at deer huntin’, out o’ season as well as in; and he keeps his eyes peeled mighty sharp. It’s ten to one he had a peek at you, and knew within five rods where you were, when the Major was hit. So it was an easy guess for him, when he was arrested, that you’d figgered in the combination.”
“But——” Sam began.
Lon interrupted him. “You listen, son! I’ll bet you he not only saw you, but believed you saw him. And he was keepin’ tabs on you and on the Major, too—’tain’t a bad idea, at that, for anybody in the woods in the deer season to watch his neighbors and what they’re about. Wal, then, we have Peter, as keen as a weasel, and full as vicious—we have him, I say, with his eyes and ears busy. Bang! goes your gun. Peter hears it. He waits for what’ll happen—always a chance that if you’ve really sighted a buck, the critter may come his way. Wal, again, in a minute or two, something does come, but it ain’t nothin’ on four legs. It’s the Major, and the Major’s fightin’ mad. Somebody’s winged him, and he thinks it’s Peter; but Peter don’t need no map to show where you come in.”
“But I——”
“Let me finish! Peter, bein’ Peter, acts accordin’. He jumps to a conclusion—and that’s that you’ve done what he’d do himself, if he was in your shoes. He figgers you’ve blazed away, and run up to find a dead deer, and come on the Major, dazed and ragin’, and grabbed the chance to put the blame off on somebody else. He credits you with knowin’ the reputation of the Groche fam’ly hereabouts, and with settin’ the Major on a false trail that leads straight to one Peter o’ that name. Then, havin’ set the Major goin’, you vamoose—and that’s what Peter Groche would ’a’ done himself, if he’d been in your fix. What say to that, Sam?”