Page:November Joe.pdf/52

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THE CRIME AT BIG TREE PORTAGE

"To begin with, number 1 had his camp pitched over there," said he; then, seeing my look of perplexity, he added pityingly: "We've a westerly wind these last two days, but before that the wind was east, and he camped the first night with his back to it. And in the new camp one bed o' boughs is fresher than the other."

The thing seemed so absurdly obvious that I was nettled.

"I suppose there are other indications I have n't noticed," I said.

"There might be some you have n't mentioned," he answered warily.

"What are they?"

"That the man who killed Lyon is thick-set and very strong; that he has been a good while in the woods without having gone to a settlement; that he owns a blunt hatchet such as we woods chaps call 'tomahawk, number 3'; that he killed a moose last week; that he can read; that he spent the night before the murder in great trouble of mind, and that likely he was a religious kind o' chap."

As November reeled off these details in his

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