XXXV
"Good heavens!" cried Amy. "What an awful thing!"
"Yes, ma'am," said Ware; "this is certainly tough. But I can't see butit was a plumb accident. Who'd have thought he'd be coming along theroad just at that minute."
"Of course, you're not to blame," Amy reassured him quickly. "We mustget help. Of course, he's quite dead."
Ware nodded, gazing down at his victim reflectively.
"I was shootin' a little high," he remarked at last.
Up to this moment Bob had said nothing.
"If it will relieve your mind, any," he told Ware, "it isn't such a caseof innocent bystander as you may think. This man is the one who hiredSaleratus Bill to abduct me in the first place; and probably to kill mein the second. I have a suspicion he got what he deserved."
"Oh!" cried Amy, looking at him reproachfully.
"It's a fact," Bob insisted. "I know his connection with all this betterthan you do, and his being on this road was no accident. It was to seehis orders carried out."
Ware was looking at him shrewdly.
"That fits," he declared. "I couldn't figure why my old friend Billdidn't cut loose. But he's got a head on him."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, when he see Oldham dropped, what use was there of going toshooting? It would just make trouble for him and he couldn't hope for nopay. He just faded."
"He's a quick thinker, then," said Bob.
"You bet you!"
The two men laid Oldham's body under the shade. As they disposed itdecently, Bob experienced again that haunting sense of having known himelsewhere that had on several occasions assailed his memory. The man'sface was familiar to him with a familiarity that Bob somehow feltantedated his California acquaintance.
"We must get to the mill and send a wagon for him," Ware was saying.
But Amy suddenly turned faint, and was unable to proceed.
"It's perfectly silly of me!" she cried indignantly. "The idea of myfeeling faint! It makes me so angry!"
"It's perfectly natural," Bob told her. "I think you've shown a heap ofnerve. Most girls would have flopped over."
The men helped her to a streamlet some hundreds of yards away. Here itwas agreed that Ware should proceed in search of a conveyance; and thatBob and Amy should there await his return.