章节正文
declared that Aleck could have sworn that Johnny
reached for his gun. Others admitted voluntarily that
while it would be a pretty weak defense, it would beat
the story Aleck had told.
Lite turned the mare and colt into a shed for the
night. He milked the two cows without giving any
thought to what he was doing, and carried the milk to
the kitchen door before he realized that it would be
wasted, sitting in pans when the house would be empty.
Still, it occurred to him that he might as well go on
with the routine of the place until they knew to a
certainty what the grand jury would do. So he went in
and put away the milk.
After that, Lite let other work wait while he cleaned
the kitchen and tried to wash out that brown stain on
the floor. His face was moody, his eyes dull with
trouble. Like a treadmill, his mind went over and over
the meager knowledge he had of the tragedy. He could
not bring himself to believe Aleck Douglas guilty of the
murder; yet he could not believe anything else.
Johnny Croft, it had been proven at the inquest,
rode out from town alone, bent on mischief, if vague,
half-drunken threats meant anything. He had told
more than one that he was going to the Lazy A, but it
was certain that no one had followed him from town.
His threats had been for the most part directed against
Carl, it is true; but if he had meant to quarrel with
Carl, he would have gone to the Bar Nothing instead of
the Lazy A. Probably he had meant to see both Carl
and Aleck, and had come here first, since it was the
nearest to town.
As to enemies, no one had particularly liked Johnny.
He was not a likeable sort; he was too "mouthy"
according to his associates. He had quarreled with a
good many for slight cause, but since he was so notoriously
blatant and argumentative, no one had taken him
seriously enough to nurse any grudge that would be
likely to breed assassination. It was inconceivable to
Lite that any man had trailed Johnny Croft to the
Lazy A and shot him down in the kitchen while he was
calmly helping himself to Jean's gingerbread. Still,
he must take that for granted or else believe what he
steadfastly refused to confess even to himself that he
believed.
It was nearly dark when he threw out the last pail
of water and stood looking down dissatisfied at the
result of his labor, while he dried his hands. The stain
was still there, in spite of him, just as the memory of
the murder would cling always to the place. He went
out and watered Jean's poppies and sweet peas and
pansies, still going over and over the evidence and trying
to fill in the gaps.
He had blundered with his lie that had meant to
help. The lie had proven to every man who heard him
utter it that his faith in Aleck's innocence was not
strong; it had proven that he did not trust the facts.
That hurt Lite, and made it seem more than ever his
task to clear up the matter, if he could. If he could
not, then he would make amends in whatever way he
might.
Almost as if he were guarding that gruesome room
which was empty now and silent,--since the clock had
not been wound and had run down,--he sat long upon
the narrow platform before the kitchen door and smoked
and stared straight before him. Once he thought he
saw a man move cautiously from the corner of the
shed where the youngest calf slept beside its mother,
He had been thinking so deeply of other things that
he was not sure, but he went down there, his cigarette
glowing in the gloom, and stood looking and listening.
He neither saw nor heard anything, and presently
he went back to the house; but his abstraction was
broken by the fancy, so that he did not sit down again
to smoke and think. He had thought until his brain
felt heavy and stupid; and the last cigarette he lighted;
he threw away, for he had smoked until his tongue was
sore. He went in and went to bed.
For a long time he lay awake. Finally he dropped
into a sleep so heavy that it was nearer to a torpor, and
it was the sunlight that awoke him; sunlight that was
warm in the room and proved how late the morning was.
He swore in his astonishment and got up hastily, a
great deal more optimistic than when he had lain down,
and hurried out to feed the stock before he boiled coffee
and fried eggs for himself.
It was when he went in to cook his belated breakfast
that Lite noticed something which had no logical
explanation. There were footprints on the kitchen floor
that he had scrubbed so diligently. He stood looking
at them, much as he had looked at the stain that would
not come out, no matter how hard he scrubbed. He had
not gone in the room after he had pulled the door shut
and gone off to water Jean's dowers. He was positive
upon that point; and even if he had gone in, his tracks
would scarcely have led straight across the room to the
cupboard where the table dishes were kept.
The tracks led to the cupboard, and were muddled
confusedly there, as though the maker had stood there
for some minutes. Lite could not see any sense in
that. They were very distinct, just as footprints always
show plainly on clean boards. The floor had evidently
been moist still,--Lite had scrubbed man-fashion,
with a broom, and had not been very particular
about drying the floor afterwards. Also he had thrown
the water straight out from the door, and the fellow
must have stepped on the moist sand that clung to his
boots. In the dark he could not notice that, or see that
he had left tracks on the floor.
Lite went to the cupboard and looked inside it,
wondering what the man could have wanted there. It was
one of those old-fashioned "safes" such as our
grandmothers considered indispensable in the furnishing of
a kitchen. It held the table dishes neatly piled: dinner
plates at the end of the middle shelf, smaller plates
next, then a stack of saucers,--the arrangement stereotyped,
unvarying since first Lite Avery had taken dishtowel
in hand to dry the dishes for Jean when she was
ten and stood upon a footstool so that her elbows would
be higher than the rim of the dishpan. The cherry-
blossom dinner set that had come from the mail-order
house long ago was chipped now and incomplete, but
the familiar rows gave Lite an odd sense of the
unreality of the tragedy that had so lately taken place
in that room.
Clearly there was nothing there to tempt a thief, and
there was nothing disturbed. Lite straightened up and
looked down thoughtfully upon the top of the cupboard,
where Jean had stacked out-of-date newspapers
and magazines, and where Aleck had laid a pair of
extra gloves. He pulled out the two small drawers just
under the cupboard top and looked within them. The
first held pipes and sacks of tobacco and books of
cigarette papers; Lite knew well enough the contents of
that drawer. He appraised the supply of tobacco,
remembered how much had been there on the morning of
the murder, and decided that none had been taken.
He helped himself to a fresh ten-cent sack of tobacco
and inspected the other drawer.
Here were merchants' bills, a few letters of no
consequence, a couple of writing tablets, two lead pencils,
and a steel pen and a squat bottle of ink. This was
called the writing-drawer, and had been since Lite first
came to the ranch. Here Lite believed the confusion
was recent. Jean had been very domestic since her
return from school, and all disorder had been frowned
upon. Lately the letters had been stacked in a corner,
whereas now they were scattered. But they were
of no consequence, once they had been read, and there
was nothing else to merit attention from any one.
Lite looked down at the tracks and saw that they led
into another room, which was Aleck's bedroom. He
went in there, but he could not find any reason for a
night-prowler's visit. Aleck's desk was always open.
There was never anything there which he wanted to
hide away. His account books and his business
correspondence, such as it was, lay accessible to the
curious. There was nothing intricate or secret about the
running of the Lazy A ranch; nothing that should
interest any one save the owner.
It occurred to Lite that incriminating evidence is
sometimes placed surreptitiously in a suspected man's
desk. He had heard of such things being done. He
could not imagine what evidence might be placed here
by any one, but he made a thorough search. He did
not find anything that remotely concerned the murder.
He looked through the living-room, and even opened
the door which led from the kitchen into Jean's room,
which had been built on to the rest of the house a few
years before. He could not find any excuse for those
footprints.
He cooked and ate his breakfast absent-mindedly,
glancing often down at the footprints on the floor, and
occasionally at the brown stain in the center. He decided
that he would not say anything about those tracks.
He would keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, and
see what came of it.
CHAPTER III
WHAT A MAN'S GOOD NAME IS WORTH
You would think that the bare word of a man who
has lived uprightly in a community for fifteen
years or so would be believed under oath, even if his
whole future did depend upon it. You would think
that Aleck Douglas could not be convicted of murder
just because he had reported that a man was shot down
in Aleck's house.
The report of Aleck Douglas' trial is not the main
feature of this story; it is merely the commencement,
one might say. Therefore, I am going to be brief as
I can and still give you a clear idea of the situation,
and then I am going to skip the next three years and
begin where the real story begins.
Aleck's position was dishearteningly simple, and there
was nothing much that one could do to soften the facts
or throw a new light on the murder. Lite watched,
wide awake and eager, many a night for the return of
that prowler, but he never saw or heard a thing that
gave him any clue whatever. So the footprints seemed
likely to remain the mystery they had seemed on the
morning when he discovered them. He laid traps,
pretending to ride away from the ranch to town before
dark, and returning cautiously by way of the trail
reached for his gun. Others admitted voluntarily that
while it would be a pretty weak defense, it would beat
the story Aleck had told.
Lite turned the mare and colt into a shed for the
night. He milked the two cows without giving any
thought to what he was doing, and carried the milk to
the kitchen door before he realized that it would be
wasted, sitting in pans when the house would be empty.
Still, it occurred to him that he might as well go on
with the routine of the place until they knew to a
certainty what the grand jury would do. So he went in
and put away the milk.
After that, Lite let other work wait while he cleaned
the kitchen and tried to wash out that brown stain on
the floor. His face was moody, his eyes dull with
trouble. Like a treadmill, his mind went over and over
the meager knowledge he had of the tragedy. He could
not bring himself to believe Aleck Douglas guilty of the
murder; yet he could not believe anything else.
Johnny Croft, it had been proven at the inquest,
rode out from town alone, bent on mischief, if vague,
half-drunken threats meant anything. He had told
more than one that he was going to the Lazy A, but it
was certain that no one had followed him from town.
His threats had been for the most part directed against
Carl, it is true; but if he had meant to quarrel with
Carl, he would have gone to the Bar Nothing instead of
the Lazy A. Probably he had meant to see both Carl
and Aleck, and had come here first, since it was the
nearest to town.
As to enemies, no one had particularly liked Johnny.
He was not a likeable sort; he was too "mouthy"
according to his associates. He had quarreled with a
good many for slight cause, but since he was so notoriously
blatant and argumentative, no one had taken him
seriously enough to nurse any grudge that would be
likely to breed assassination. It was inconceivable to
Lite that any man had trailed Johnny Croft to the
Lazy A and shot him down in the kitchen while he was
calmly helping himself to Jean's gingerbread. Still,
he must take that for granted or else believe what he
steadfastly refused to confess even to himself that he
believed.
It was nearly dark when he threw out the last pail
of water and stood looking down dissatisfied at the
result of his labor, while he dried his hands. The stain
was still there, in spite of him, just as the memory of
the murder would cling always to the place. He went
out and watered Jean's poppies and sweet peas and
pansies, still going over and over the evidence and trying
to fill in the gaps.
He had blundered with his lie that had meant to
help. The lie had proven to every man who heard him
utter it that his faith in Aleck's innocence was not
strong; it had proven that he did not trust the facts.
That hurt Lite, and made it seem more than ever his
task to clear up the matter, if he could. If he could
not, then he would make amends in whatever way he
might.
Almost as if he were guarding that gruesome room
which was empty now and silent,--since the clock had
not been wound and had run down,--he sat long upon
the narrow platform before the kitchen door and smoked
and stared straight before him. Once he thought he
saw a man move cautiously from the corner of the
shed where the youngest calf slept beside its mother,
He had been thinking so deeply of other things that
he was not sure, but he went down there, his cigarette
glowing in the gloom, and stood looking and listening.
He neither saw nor heard anything, and presently
he went back to the house; but his abstraction was
broken by the fancy, so that he did not sit down again
to smoke and think. He had thought until his brain
felt heavy and stupid; and the last cigarette he lighted;
he threw away, for he had smoked until his tongue was
sore. He went in and went to bed.
For a long time he lay awake. Finally he dropped
into a sleep so heavy that it was nearer to a torpor, and
it was the sunlight that awoke him; sunlight that was
warm in the room and proved how late the morning was.
He swore in his astonishment and got up hastily, a
great deal more optimistic than when he had lain down,
and hurried out to feed the stock before he boiled coffee
and fried eggs for himself.
It was when he went in to cook his belated breakfast
that Lite noticed something which had no logical
explanation. There were footprints on the kitchen floor
that he had scrubbed so diligently. He stood looking
at them, much as he had looked at the stain that would
not come out, no matter how hard he scrubbed. He had
not gone in the room after he had pulled the door shut
and gone off to water Jean's dowers. He was positive
upon that point; and even if he had gone in, his tracks
would scarcely have led straight across the room to the
cupboard where the table dishes were kept.
The tracks led to the cupboard, and were muddled
confusedly there, as though the maker had stood there
for some minutes. Lite could not see any sense in
that. They were very distinct, just as footprints always
show plainly on clean boards. The floor had evidently
been moist still,--Lite had scrubbed man-fashion,
with a broom, and had not been very particular
about drying the floor afterwards. Also he had thrown
the water straight out from the door, and the fellow
must have stepped on the moist sand that clung to his
boots. In the dark he could not notice that, or see that
he had left tracks on the floor.
Lite went to the cupboard and looked inside it,
wondering what the man could have wanted there. It was
one of those old-fashioned "safes" such as our
grandmothers considered indispensable in the furnishing of
a kitchen. It held the table dishes neatly piled: dinner
plates at the end of the middle shelf, smaller plates
next, then a stack of saucers,--the arrangement stereotyped,
unvarying since first Lite Avery had taken dishtowel
in hand to dry the dishes for Jean when she was
ten and stood upon a footstool so that her elbows would
be higher than the rim of the dishpan. The cherry-
blossom dinner set that had come from the mail-order
house long ago was chipped now and incomplete, but
the familiar rows gave Lite an odd sense of the
unreality of the tragedy that had so lately taken place
in that room.
Clearly there was nothing there to tempt a thief, and
there was nothing disturbed. Lite straightened up and
looked down thoughtfully upon the top of the cupboard,
where Jean had stacked out-of-date newspapers
and magazines, and where Aleck had laid a pair of
extra gloves. He pulled out the two small drawers just
under the cupboard top and looked within them. The
first held pipes and sacks of tobacco and books of
cigarette papers; Lite knew well enough the contents of
that drawer. He appraised the supply of tobacco,
remembered how much had been there on the morning of
the murder, and decided that none had been taken.
He helped himself to a fresh ten-cent sack of tobacco
and inspected the other drawer.
Here were merchants' bills, a few letters of no
consequence, a couple of writing tablets, two lead pencils,
and a steel pen and a squat bottle of ink. This was
called the writing-drawer, and had been since Lite first
came to the ranch. Here Lite believed the confusion
was recent. Jean had been very domestic since her
return from school, and all disorder had been frowned
upon. Lately the letters had been stacked in a corner,
whereas now they were scattered. But they were
of no consequence, once they had been read, and there
was nothing else to merit attention from any one.
Lite looked down at the tracks and saw that they led
into another room, which was Aleck's bedroom. He
went in there, but he could not find any reason for a
night-prowler's visit. Aleck's desk was always open.
There was never anything there which he wanted to
hide away. His account books and his business
correspondence, such as it was, lay accessible to the
curious. There was nothing intricate or secret about the
running of the Lazy A ranch; nothing that should
interest any one save the owner.
It occurred to Lite that incriminating evidence is
sometimes placed surreptitiously in a suspected man's
desk. He had heard of such things being done. He
could not imagine what evidence might be placed here
by any one, but he made a thorough search. He did
not find anything that remotely concerned the murder.
He looked through the living-room, and even opened
the door which led from the kitchen into Jean's room,
which had been built on to the rest of the house a few
years before. He could not find any excuse for those
footprints.
He cooked and ate his breakfast absent-mindedly,
glancing often down at the footprints on the floor, and
occasionally at the brown stain in the center. He decided
that he would not say anything about those tracks.
He would keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, and
see what came of it.
CHAPTER III
WHAT A MAN'S GOOD NAME IS WORTH
You would think that the bare word of a man who
has lived uprightly in a community for fifteen
years or so would be believed under oath, even if his
whole future did depend upon it. You would think
that Aleck Douglas could not be convicted of murder
just because he had reported that a man was shot down
in Aleck's house.
The report of Aleck Douglas' trial is not the main
feature of this story; it is merely the commencement,
one might say. Therefore, I am going to be brief as
I can and still give you a clear idea of the situation,
and then I am going to skip the next three years and
begin where the real story begins.
Aleck's position was dishearteningly simple, and there
was nothing much that one could do to soften the facts
or throw a new light on the murder. Lite watched,
wide awake and eager, many a night for the return of
that prowler, but he never saw or heard a thing that
gave him any clue whatever. So the footprints seemed
likely to remain the mystery they had seemed on the
morning when he discovered them. He laid traps,
pretending to ride away from the ranch to town before
dark, and returning cautiously by way of the trail
- tragedy [´trædʒidi]
n.悲剧；惨案；灾难 (初中英语单词) - guilty [´gilti] a.有罪的；心虚的 (初中英语单词)
- mischief [´mistʃif] n.伤害；故障；调皮 (初中英语单词)
- confess [kən´fes] vt.供认；坦白；承认 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- platform [´plætfɔ:m] n.(平)台；讲台；站台 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- sunlight [´sʌnlait] n.日光 (初中英语单词)
- astonishment [ə´stɔniʃmənt] n.吃惊；惊异 (初中英语单词)
- hastily [´heistili] ad.急速地；草率地 (初中英语单词)
- diligently [´dilidʒəntli] ad.勤奋地 (初中英语单词)
- distinct [di´stiŋkt] a.清楚的；独特的 (初中英语单词)
- plainly [´pleinli] ad.平坦地；简单地 (初中英语单词)
- old-fashioned [´əuld´feʃənd] a.老式的；过时的 (初中英语单词)
- arrangement [ə´reindʒmənt] n.整理；排列；筹备 (初中英语单词)
- lately [´leitli] ad.近来，不久前 (初中英语单词)
- tobacco [tə´bækəu] n.烟草(叶)；卷烟 (初中英语单词)
- contents [´kɔ:ntents] n.容纳物；要旨 (初中英语单词)
- drawer [drɔ:ə] n.抽屉 (初中英语单词)
- writing [´raitiŋ] n.书写；写作；书法 (初中英语单词)
- domestic [də´mestik] a.家庭的；本国的 (初中英语单词)
- consequence [´kɔnsikwəns] n.结果；后果；推断 (初中英语单词)
- account [ə´kaunt] vi.说明 vt.认为 n.帐目 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- soften [´sɔfən] v.使(变)软(柔和) (初中英语单词)
- mystery [´mistəri] n.神秘；秘密；故弄玄虚 (初中英语单词)
- routine [ru:´ti:n] n.日常工作 a.日常的 (高中英语单词)
- meager [´mi:gə] a.瘦的；贫弱的 (高中英语单词)
- grudge [grʌdʒ] vt.&n.吝啬；怨恨 (高中英语单词)
- innocence [´inəsəns] n.无罪；天真 (高中英语单词)
- cautiously [´kɔ:ʃəsli] ad.小心地；谨慎地 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- cupboard [´kʌbəd] n.碗柜，食橱 (高中英语单词)
- indispensable [,indi´spensəbəl] a.绝对必要的 (高中英语单词)
- thoughtfully [´θɔ:tfuli] ad.深思地；体贴地 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- disorder [dis´ɔ:də] n.杂乱 vt.扰乱 (高中英语单词)
- thorough [´θʌrə] a.彻底的；详尽的 (高中英语单词)
- concerned [kən´sə:nd] a.有关的；担心的 (高中英语单词)
- community [kə´mju:niti] n.团体；社区；公众 (高中英语单词)
- gingerbread [´dʒindʒəbred] n.&a.(像)姜饼(的) (英语四级单词)
- accessible [ək´sesəbəl] a.易接近的；可到达的 (英语四级单词)
- intricate [´intrikit] a.错综复杂的；难懂的 (英语四级单词)
- assassination [ə,sæsi´neiʃən] n.暗杀；暗杀事件 (英语六级单词)
- dissatisfied [´dis,sætis´fækʃən] a.不满的；显出不满的 (英语六级单词)
- amends [ə´mendz] n.赔偿；赔罪 (英语六级单词)
- belated [bi´leitid] a.延误的；遗留的 (英语六级单词)
- incomplete [,inkəm´pli:t] a.不完全的，未完成的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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