Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries by Melville Davisson Post Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t see him,” said Dix.
    â€œAnd yet,” continued Abner, “you made Alkire go with him.”
    I saw cunning enter Dix’s face. He was puzzled, but he thought Abner off the scent.
    â€œAnd I made Alkire go with somebody, did I? Well, who was it? Did you see him?”
    â€œNobody ever saw him.”
    â€œHe must be a stranger.”
    â€œNo,” replied Abner, “he rode the hills before we came into them.”
    â€œIndeed!” said Dix. “And what kind of a horse did he ride?”
    â€œWhite!” said Abner.
    Dix got some inkling of what Abner meant now, and his face grew livid.
    â€œWhat are you driving at?” he cried. “You sit here beating around the bush. If you know anything, say it out; let’s hear it. What is it?”
    Abner put out his big sinewy hand as though to thrust Dix back into his chair.
    â€œListen!” he said. “Two days after that I wanted to get out into the Ten Mile country and I went through your lands; I rode a path through the narrow valley west of your house. At a point on the path where there is an apple tree something caught my eye and I stopped. Five minutes later I knew exactly what had happened under that apple tree… Someone had ridden there; he had stopped under that tree; then something happened and the horse had run away—I knew that by the tracks of a horse on this path. I knew that the horse had a rider and that it had stopped under this tree, because there was a limb cut from the tree at a certain height. I knew the horse had remained there, because the small twigs of the apple limb had been pared o&, and they lay in a heap on the path. I knew that something had frightened the horse and that it had run away, because the sod was torn up where it had jumped… Ten minutes later I knew that the rider had not been in the saddle when the horse jumped; I knew what it was that had frightened the horse; and I knew that the thing had occurred the day before. Now, how did I know that?
    â€œListen! I put my horse into the tracks of that other horse under the tree and studied the ground. Immediately I saw where the weeds beside the path had been crushed, as though some animal had been lying down there, and in the very center of that bed I saw a little heap of fresh earth. That was strange, Dix, that fresh earth where the animal had been lying down! It had come there after the animal had got up, or else it would have been pressed flat. But where had it come from?
    â€œI got off and walked around the apple tree, moving out from it in an ever-widening circle. Finally I found an ant heap, the top of which had been scraped away as though one had taken up the loose earth in his hands. Then I went back and plucked up some of the earth. The under clods of it were colored as with red paint… No, it wasn’t paint.
    â€œThere was a brush fence some fifty yards away. I went over to it and followed it down.
    â€œOpposite the apple tree the weeds were again crushed as though some animal had lain there. I sat down in that place and drew a linewith my eye across a log of the fence to a limb of the apple tree. Then I got on my horse and again put him in the tracks of that other horse under the tree; the imaginary line passed through the pit of my stomach!… I am four inches taller than Alkire.”
    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.
    â€œLord 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