Papa dashed back toward the heater. "Black Idd, the men are after Ned! And Mister Bailey's got the sheriff, figuring to have me arrested, I reckon! You gotta help me till I can talk some sense into them!" "What I do, Mister Jodie?" "Get farther back there behind the heater and sit on the keg. Make out like you're dozing off to sleep! It'll look like everything's the same as usual." Papa leaped over the counter and ran to the far end of the store, where he started moving bottles of snuff from one shelf to another. He began whistling, of all things. Next minute, when Mister Wes shoved open the front door and all the men came crowding in, Papa didn't so much as halfway look around. "Hey, Jodie!" "Why hi, Wes! I'll be up there in a minute. I was sorta straightening things up back here in the back, getting this conglomeration of snuff together on one shelf. Well! Looks like we got quite a delegation here! Morning, Sheriff. Morning, Mister Hawk. Hal, Dan, all y'all. Come on in, Doctor Elton. Why, Pa, I didn't see you. Y'all find yourselves some chairs. I got one or two more here in the back. Wiley, son, you bring them up here so everybody can sit down. I'll roll up another nail keg or two." "We ain't in no sittin' notion!" Mister Hawk told Papa. "Jodie, it was that darkie Ned that murdered Ward! We gotta get him. Doc says he won't go. Says we gotta be legal. I say we can save the sheriff here some time and trouble." "Hold on, Mister Hawk. Let's take it slow. We ain't got a lick of proof that Ward was murdered. Besides, I don't figure Ned's been studying shooting anybody." "Well, what about the squirrel in Ward's pocket?" "The squirrel? What makes you so certain that squirrel—" "I figgered it out, Jodie! All y'all say I'm losing my mind, but I still got it! I woulda know'd yesterday things wasn't right, if I'd 've been thinking. But I reckon I plain wasn't thinking. You recollect Ward's two dogs tore that squirrel to pieces?" "Yes, sir." "Well, Jodie, when we all walked past where them hounds had been a-fightin', I seen drops of blood had dripped on the sand. We was all talkin', and I didn't pay it no mind till last night when I kinda got my wits together. Then it struck me! That squirrel was fresh killed! Jodie, Ward didn't shoot it Sunday evenin'! That thing would've been froze stiff as a fire poker—its blood too! So, all I had to do was find out who shot a squirrel early Monday mornin' and slipped it in Ward's pocket!" "But, Mister Hawk, you can't—" "Lemme finish tellin' you. I done told Hal and the rest. I said to myself, 'Hawk Lumpkin, whoever done that was pretty smart. He figgered we'd all think Ward went huntin' and just had a accident!' But he didn't figger on me! This mornin' it taken me just about a hour to get at the truth!" "How's that?" "You ever seen that scrawny-lookin' boy Ned's been keepin'?" "Lots of times. They call him Little Stray."