“To-day he had some trouble with Terry again. I don’t know what it was all about, but there was a youngster over here, a fine likely lookin’ young lad and they took him away to Chandler. I says to my man, they’ve gone to make the poor, frightened boy tell something and then come back an’ arrest Luke. So I guess he goes away while it was yet time—Lord knows what it was all about.” Ira walked through the poor, little, deserted house and even he was touched by its bareness. Curious, gossipy neighbors accompanied him, commenting upon the brown, taciturn man who had gone and taken away with him the one thing of value that he possessed, his little girl. If he had gone for fear Westy might weaken, under some rustic third degree, and incriminate him, he might have saved himself the slight inconvenience of a hasty departure. The scout who had seen to it that the little motherless girl and her father were not parted, was not likely to say one word more than he intended to say to the authorities or to any one else. One thing Ira did find in the little house which interested him. This was a collection of as many as a dozen empty tinfoil packages on the wooden shelf above the cooking stove. According to the labels they had contained Mechanic’s Delight Plug Cut tobacco. CHAPTER XXV A BARGAIN Ira did not see anything remarkable in Westy’s having shot the deer twice. He was surprised and amused at the boy, having shot it once; it had caused him to regard Westy as a youthful hero of the true dime novel brand. But he had not much respect for Westy’s skill as a marksman. And he was quite ready to believe that two shots had been required to “drop” the deer. Six or eight shots would not greatly have surprised him. What puzzled him was the undoubted fact (established by the telltale tobacco package) that Luke Meadows had very lately been in the neighborhood of the killing. He had not attached any particular significance to this package until he had seen similar packages in Luke’s deserted home. Now he found himself wondering how Westy had happened to be at Luke’s house, and why Luke had so suddenly gone away. The true explanation of the whole business never occurred to Ira. That anybody could voluntarily make the sacrifice that Westy had made was not within the range of his conception. Probably he had never done a mean thing in all his checkered career. But, on the other hand, he had probably never done anything very self-sacrificing. To kidnap a barbarous king was certainly not the act of a gentleman (as Westy’s mother had observed) but it was not _mean_....