Barrett’s was not accustomed to visits from nattily attired boy scouts with rifles slung over their shoulders and the lolling youths of the settlement stared at him and commented audibly as he passed. “Hey, what’s that you got over your shoulder?” one of them called.
“That, oh, that’s a soup spoon,” said Westy, quite unperturbed. “Do you know where Luke Meadows lives?”
“What d’yer want ’im fer?” one of the natives asked.
“Oh, I just wanted to see him,” said Westy.
“Whatcher want ter see ’im fer?”
“Oh, just for fun. Do you know where he lives?”
“He lives in that white house up the road,” said a rather more accommodating boy. “Do you see the house with the winder broken? The one with the chimney gone? He lives there, only he ain’t home.”
“He is too,” contradicted another informer. “I seen him go in his back door half an hour ago; he come around through the fields from the woods.”
“Thanks,” said Westy.
If Luke Meadows lived in the house indicated and had indeed returned home through the fields, then he must have emerged from the woods at a considerable distance from his home, an unnecessary thing to do except upon the theory that he wished to throw some one off his track, or at least avoid being seen. Westy thought he could sense the position in which this man stood toward the game wardens of the county. He thought it likely that there had been previous encounters between them. Hunting game out of season is a pursuit which is pretty apt to be chronic.
Now that Westy was about............