Uncle Abner
before the trampled weeds, there was an impression as though a square bar of iron had been laid across it."
My uncle stopped. And Campbell said:
"Go on."
Abner remained a moment, his eyes on the man; then he continued:
"The impression was in a direct line toward the point on the trail where the water had been poured out. I was puzzled. I got into the saddle and rode back across the trail and down the line of the fragments of lint. At the edge of the forest I found where a log-heap had been burned. I got down again and walked back along the line of the twisted lint. I looked closely, and I saw that the fragments of dried grass, and now and then a rag-weed, had been pressed down, as though by something moving down the hillside from the trail to the burned log-heap.
"Now, Campbell," he said, "what happened on that hillside?"
Campbell stood up and looked my uncle in the face. "What do you think happened?" he said.
"I think," replied Abner, "that some one sat in the weeds behind the fence with a half-stocked, square-barreled rifle laid on the flat rail, and from that ambush shot something passing on the trail, and then dragged it down the hillside to the log-heap. I think that poured-out water was to wash away the blood where the thing fell. I do not know
280
