Page:November Joe.pdf/44

 "Then, as you seem to know so much, tell me what you do know."

"I know that Lyon reached here in the afternoon of the day before yesterday. He'd been visiting his traps upstream. He had n't been here more'n a few minutes, and was lighting his pipe in the shelter there, when he hears a voice hail him. He comes out and sees a man in a canoe shoved into the bank. That man shot him dead and cleared off—without leaving a trace."

"How can you be sure of all this?" I asked, for not one of these things had occurred to my mind.

"Because I found a pipe of tobacco not rightly lit, but just charred on top, beside Lyon's body, and a newly used match in this shack. The man that killed him come downstream and surprised him."

"How can you tell he came downstream?"

"Because, if he'd come upstream Lyon would 'a' seen him from the shack," said November with admirable patience.

"You say the shot was fired from a canoe?"

"The river's too wide to shoot across; and,