Silence fell between the two men. Baker broke it suddenly and with his customary frankness. “Look here, Bill Garner,” he said. “That young feller's yore partner an' friend, but I've got his interests at heart myself, an' it don't do no harm sometimes fer two men to talk over what concerns a friend to both. I come in town to talk to _somebody_, an' it looks like you are the man.” “Oh, that's it,” Garner said. “Well, out with it, Baker.” Pole thrust his right hand into his pocket and took out a splinter of soft pine and his knife. Then, with the toe of his heavy shoe, he drew a wooden, sawdust-filled cuspidor towards him and over it he prepared to whittle. “I want to talk to you about Carson,” he said. “It ain't none o' my business, Bill, but I believe he's in great big trouble.” “You do, eh?” and Garner seemed to throw caution to the winds as he leaned forward, his great, facile mouth open. “Well, Pole?” “Gossip--talk under cover from one mouth to another,” the mountaineer drawled out, “is the most dangerous thing, next to a bucket o' powder in a cook-stove that you are goin' to bake in, of anything I know of. Gossip has got hold of Dwight, Bill, an' it's tangled itself all about him. Ef some'n' ain't done to choke it off it will git him down as shore as a blacksnake kin swallow a toad after he's kivered it with slime.” “You mean--” But Garner seemed to think better of his inclination towards subterfuge and broke off. “I mean about the way Dan Willis met his death,” Pole said, to the point. “I'm no fool an' you ain't, at least you wouldn't be ef you was paid by some client to git at the facts. Folks are ready to swear Carson was seed the day that thing happened on that road inside of a mile o' whar Willis was found. You know what time Carson left here that day; it was sometime after dinner, an' the hotel man at Spring-town says he got thar an' registered after dark. He says, too, that Carson looked nervous an' upset an' seemed more anxious to avoid folks than the general run of vote-hunters. Then--then, oh, well, what's the use o' beatin' about the bush? You know an' I know that Carson hain't been actin' like himself since then. It's all we can do to git 'im interested in his own popularity, an' that shows some'n' is wrong--dead wrong. An' it looks to me like it is a matter that ought to be attended to. Killin' a man is serious enough in the eyes of the law without covering it up till it's jerked out of you by the State solicitor.” “So you think the two men met?” Garner said, now quite as if he were inquiring into the legal status of any ordinary case. “That's my judgment,” answered Pole. “And if I'm right, then it seems to me that Carson an' his friends ought to take action before--” “Before what?” Garner prompted, almost eagerly. “Before the grand jury takes it up, as you know they will have to with all this commotion goin' the rounds.”