Dreeme fumbled for his pipe contentedly. Well, Walden Slater was a friend. He was an ally. He was stretching a grotesque gnarled hand across the imbroglio of nights and days to Dreeme. The young doctor watched the farmer’s bowed shoulders disappear through the door. He was going back to his meager sun-parched acres where he would labor all the harder that he might feed one more mouth. Dreeme lighted his pipe, pushed his chair back, and walked slowly across the room. Before he reached the warm flood of sunlight he was halted.
“Doctor Dreeme.”
The Reverend George Burroughs stood beside the table with a half-raised yellow claw. His stringy black hair stood out above his frayed coat collar.
“If you enjoy the pleasing scent of the evening air,” he declared in his neighing voice, “perhaps we may stroll together some time. I am a silent companion, I fear, but equally a lover of nature. If you desire I shall be pleased to give you some information about the flora and fauna of this neighborhood.”
“Thank you,” responded Dreeme. “I generally stroll alone when I do stroll, which is not often. Sometime, however. …” He waved an inconclusive hand.
Outside he wondered. “Now, what the devil does he mean?” He turned at the gateway to meet a corpulent red-faced man who came running heavily down the road. The fellow was waving his arms in excitement. “Doctor,” he called as he came nearer, “Doctor.” Dreeme waited for the excited individual. When he came abreast of the doctor he stopped and puffed furiously while he mopped his ruddy face with a ruddier handkerchief. “Cardiac trouble,” thought Dreeme. Aloud he said:
“You shouldn’t run in the sun.”
The individual flourished his active hand.
“They’ve found a body by the Saccarac River, almost under the bridge,” he bellowed. “I’m Barnson. I don’t know nothing about it. My farm’s just above the bridge. My son, Simon, found the body. You remember, you treated him for blood-poisoning in the foot last Fall.”
Dreeme was uncertain as to whether he had treated the body or Simon for blood-poisoning in the foot, but he turned with Barnson and started to walk hurriedly with him up the Leeminster Road.
“Whose body?” he asked.
“Didn’t wait … to find out,” puffed Barnson. “My boy, Simon, found it. You remember … the boy you treated.”
He sat down heavily by the roadside.
“Dang it, I’m winded,” he declared. “You run ahead.”
“The body won’t run away,” said Dreeme.
Nevertheless he mounted the incline at a trot, his exertions and the sun covering his face with a freely running river of perspiration. The dry red sand puffed about his feet and sifted into his shoes. As he turned the arc of the road by the burned mill he saw a knot of men standing by the river below the bridge. They were leaning forward, their shoulders almost touching. He scrambled down the bank, the wiry weeds catching at his clothes and thrusting up his coat-sleeves as he half-slid and half-stumbled toward the low baked bank of the river. The men drew apart at the sound of his scrambling feet, and a freckled-faced youth with a bobbing Adam’s apple, whom he recognized as Simon Barnson, turned to him as he approached the group.
“It’s Wagner, Westcott’s man,” he called in a shrill voice.
Dreeme waved the men aside and approached the limp bundle of clothes that huddled before him. Wagner lay on his side, his heavy-booted feet sunk in the muddy ooze of the Saccarac River. One arm was twisted across his face. The two or three farmers who stood in a knot conversing in low tones, observed Dreeme curiously as he went methodically about his task of investigating the condition of the corpse. It was only by a violent effort that the young doctor moved Wagner’s bulky upflung arm sufficiently to study the dead man’s face. He started back with an exclamation of horror at the sight. Wagner’s eyes had been torn out and a wooden peg had been driven into each socket. Streamers of blood had flowed from these wounds and coagulated along the tanned cheeks and in the red and bushy beard. The purple lips were drawn back over the yellow teeth in a last ghastly smile of anguish. In the back of the hired man’s head, a trifle above the lined red neck, was an open wound, a gaping orifice of blood and splintered bone, that might have been made with some fairly sharp instrument, an axe or a heavy chisel.
“He’s dead all right,” said Dreeme, rising to his feet. “How long since he was found?”
The farmers stood in stolid silence until Simon Barnson constituted himself spokesman.
“I found him ’bout half an hour ago,” he said. “Then I run home and told Pa. Then I run to Bidwell’s.” He indicated a tall farmer standing near. Bidwell backed hastily away.
“Don’t you be talking too much, Simon,” called a voice from the top of the bank. “You’ll be talking yourself into jail first thing you know.”
Dreeme glanced up and saw the elder Barnson sitting on the ground and mopping his fiery face. His lips curled, and he turned back to the silent farmers. He said:
“It’s murder, you know. I should say the man’s been dead about three hours. We’ll have to find out who’s been across this bridge during the last three hours.”
The farmers shuffled together.
“I reckon there’s authorities’ll find that out,” said one of them coldly. The others nodded in agreement.
Dreeme felt helpless and out of place. He addressed himself to Simon Barnson.
“Has the coroner been sent for?”
Bidwell, the tall farmer, spoke up at that. He said:
“Yessir. I sent my man with the mare out to Leeminster right away as soon’s Simon told me. He’ll pick up Westcott
