claws. But her eyes were bright and as sharp as the teeth of a weazel trap.
"I suppose," she said, as cool as a cucumber and as sweet as honey, "you have come after the rifle."
"That is what," said my father, sternly.
She handed it over.
"Please apologize to your wife for me," she said, "for the sudden way I took it. I was in a hurry. I saw a deer down by the marsh."
"Did you get the deer?" I piped in.
"No," she said. "I missed it."
Father and I started away. But he stopped and called: "Where is Black Jean this morning?"
"Black Jean!" she laughed. "Oh, he's got another sweetheart. He has gone away with her."
"Good-day," said father.
"Good-day," said she.
And that was the end of that.
Neither Black Jean nor the big blowsy woman was ever seen again, nor hide nor hair of them. But there was lots of talk. You see, there hadn't been any deer in these parts for many years; and besides it just was not possible for so well known a character as Black Jean to vanish so completely, without leaving a single trace.
Well, finally someone laid information in the county seat and over comes a smart young chap. He questioned father and mother and made me tell him all I knew, and took it all down in writing; then he gets a constable and goes over and they arrest the little black-eyed woman.
There was no trouble about it. They say she just smiled and asked what she was being arrested for—and they told her for the murder of Black Jean. She didn't say anything to that; only asked that someone feed the big one-eyed bear during the time she was locked up.
Then the people started coming. They came on horseback, they came afoot, they came in canoes, they came in lumber wagons—no matter how far away they lived—and brought their own food along. I calculate near every soul in the district turned out and made it a sort of general holiday and lay-off, for certain it is that no one cared anything about Black Jean himself.
Every inch of the land hereabouts was searched; they poked along the entire length of that earthquake crack, and in the clearings, and in the bush, looking for fresh-turned earth. But they could not find a thing—not a thing!
Now you gentlemen know that you can't convict a person for murder unless you have got positive proof that murder's been done—the dead body itself. Which was the case here, and that smart youth from the county seat had to let the little woman go free. So she came back to the cabin, living there as quiet as you please and minding her own precise business.
Here is a pocket-piece I have had for some time. You can see for yourself that it is copper.
It is the thing my father made for Black Jean to wear over his bad eye. I found that piece of copper two years after the little woman died—near twelve year after Black Jean disappeared. And I found it in the ashes and stone at the bottom of the limekiln standing there, half-tumbled down.
A lot of people hereabouts say it doesn't follow that Black Jean's body was burned in the kiln—cremated, I guess you city chaps would call it. They can't figure out how the mischief a little ninety-pound woman could have lugged those two bodies after she shot them with my father's rifle, the distance from the cabin to the kiln—a good half mile and more.
They point out that the body of Black Jean must have weighted over two hundred pounds, not to mention that the other woman was big and fat. But they make me weary.
It is a simple as the nose on your face: The big one-eyed bear did the job for her!
