It was then that Dix began to curse. I had seen his face work while Abner was speaking and that spray of sweat had reappeared. But he kept the courage he had got.
“Lord Almighty, man!” he cried. “How prettily you sum it up! We shall presently have Lawyer Abner with his brief. Because my renters have killed a calf; because one of their horses frightened at the blood has bolted, and because they cover the blood with earth so the other horses traveling the path may not do the like; straightway I have shot Alkire out of his saddle… Man! What a mare’s nest! And now, Lawyer Abner, with your neat little conclusions, what did I do with Alkire after I had killed him? Did I cause him to vanish into the air with a smell of sulphur, or did I cause the earth to yawn and Alkire to descend into its bowels?”
“Dix,” replied Abner, “your words move somewhat near the truth.”
“Upon my soul,” cried Dix, “you compliment me. If I had that trick of magic, believe me, you would be already some distance down.”
Abner remained a moment silent.
“Dix,” he said, “what does it mean when one finds a plot of earth resodded?”
“Is that a riddle?” cried Dix. “Well, confound me, if I don’t answer it! You charge me with murder and then you fling in this neat conundrum. Now, what could be the answer to that riddle, Abner? If one had done a murder this sod would overlie a grave and Alkire would be in it in his bloody shirt. Do I give the answer?”
“You do not,” replied Abner.
“No!” cried Dix. “Your sodded plot no grave, and Alkire not within it waiting for the trump of Gabriel! Why, man, where are your little damned conclusions?”
“Dix,” said Abner, “you do not deceive me in the least; Alkire is not sleeping in a grave.”
“Then in the air,” sneered Dix, “with the smell of sulphur?”
“Nor in the air,” said Abner.
“Then consumed with fire, like the priests of Baal?”
“Nor with fire,” said Abner.
Dix had got back the quiet of his face; this banter had put him where he was when Abner entered. “This is all fools’ talk,” he said; “if I had killed Alkire, what could I have done with the body? And the horse! What could I have done with the horse? Remember, no man has ever seen Alkire’s horse any more than he has seen Alkire-and for the reason that Alkire rode him out of the hills that night. Now, look here, Abner, you have asked me a good many questions. I will ask you one. Among your little conclusions do you find that I did this thing alone or with the aid of others?”
“Dix,” replied Abner, “I will answer that upon my own belief you had no accomplice.”
“Then,” said Dix, “how could I have carried off the horse? Alkire I might carry; but his horse weighed thirteen hundred pounds!”
“Dix,” said Abner, “no man helped you do this thing; but there were men who helped you to conceal it.”
“And now,” cried Dix, “the man is going mad! Who could I trust with such work, I ask you? Have I a renter that would not tell it when he moved on to another’s land, or when he got a quart of cider in him? Where are the men who helped me?”
“Dix,” said Abner, “they have been dead these fifty years.”
I heard Dix laugh then, and his evil face lighted as though a candle were behind it. And in truth, I thought he had got Abner silenced.
“In the name of Heaven!” he cried. “With such proofs it is a wonder that you did not have me hanged.”
“And hanged you should have been,” said Abner.
“Well,” cried Dix, “go and tell the sheriff, and mind you lay before him those little, neat conclusions: How from a horse track and the place where a calf was butchered you have reasoned on Alkire’s murder, and to conceal the body and the horse you have reasoned on the aid of men who were rotting in their graves when I was born; and see how he will receive you!”
Abner gave no attention to the man’s flippant speech. He got his great silver watch out of his pocket, pressed the stem and looked. Then he spoke in his deep, even voice.
“Dix,” he said, “it is nearly midnight; in an hour you must be on your journey, and I have something more to say. Listen! I knew this thing had been done the previous day because it had rained on the night that I met Alkire, and the earth of this ant heap had been disturbed after that. Moreover, this earth had been frozen, and that showed a night had passed since it had been placed there. And I knew the rider of that horse was Alkire because, beside the path near the severed twigs lay my knife, where it had fallen from his hand. This much I learned in some fifteen minutes; the rest took somewhat longer.
“I followed the track of the horse until it stopped in the little valley below. It was easy to follow while the horse ran, because the sod was torn; but when it ceased to run there was no track that I could follow. There was a little stream threading the valley, and I began at the wood and came slowly up to see if I could find where the horse had crossed. Finally I found a horse track and there was also a man’s track, which meant that you had caught the horse and were leading it away. But where?
“On the rising ground above there was an old orchard where there had once been a house. The work about that house had been done a hundred years. It was rotted down now. You had opened this orchard into the pasture. I rode all over the face of this hill and finally I entered this orchard. There was a great, flat, mosscovered stone lying a few steps from where the house had stood. As I looked I noticed that the moss growing from it into the earth had been broken along the edges of the stone, and then I noticed that for a few feet about the stone the ground had been resodded. I got down and lifted up some of this new sod. Under it the earth had been soaked with that… red paint.
“It was clever of you Dix, to resod the ground; that took only a little time and it effectually concealed the place where you had killed the horse; but it was foolish of you to forget that the broken moss around the edges of the great flat stone could not be mended.”
“Abner!” cried Dix. “Stop!” And I saw that spray of sweat, and his face working like kneaded bread, and the shiver of that abominable chill on him.
Abner was silent for a moment and then he went on, but from another quarter.
“Twice,” said Abner, “the Angel of the Lord stood before me and I did not know it; but the third time I knew it. It is not in the cry of the wind, nor in the voice of many waters that His presence is made known to us. That man in Israel had only the sign that the beast under him would not go on. Twice I had as good a sign, and tonight, when Marks broke a stirrup-leather before my house and called me to the door and asked me for a knife to mend it, I saw and I came!”
The log that Abner had thrown on was burned down, and the fire was again a mass of embers; the room was filled with that dull red light. Dix had got on to his feet, and he stood now twisting before the fire, his hands reaching out to it, and that cold creeping in his bones, and the smell of the fire on him.
Abner rose. And when he spoke his voice was like a thing that has dimension and weight.
“Dix,” he said, “you robbed the grazers; you shot Alkire out of his saddle; and a child you would have murdered!”
And I saw the sleeve of Abner’s coat begin to move, then it stopped. He stood staring at something against the wall. I looked to see what the thing was, but I did not see it. Abner was looking beyond the wall, as though it had been moved away.
And all the time Dix had been shaking with that hellish cold, and twisting on the hearth and crowding into the fire. Then he fell back, and he was the Dix I knew-his face was slack; his eye was furtive; and he was full of terror.