Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/165

 about it, he could see places and ways where the crime might perhaps be revealed. Of course, he recalled murders which had been carefully hidden, but which had risen up to terrify the perpetrators and convict them even before men.

He steered up the river, but looked back down the reaches and bends frequently. It seemed to him as though someone might be pursuing. He was not sure that a swift sheriff's boat would not suddenly swing up in chase of him. The idea of that dead man returning to the surface, his reason told him, was preposterous; but his fears told him that it was possible. A man had been killed up Arkansas River once, and sunk with a chilled steel plow; the body and plow were recovered three hundred miles down the Mississippi. Macrado had seen the plow. A man recalls such things when he is himself menaced by an untoward revelation.

"I'm satisfied," he told himself. "I got enough money now. I don't need any more money. I'll jes' live on this. Sho! I plumb forgot those diamonds he was going afteh! He 'lowed to get them."

There was something reasonable in the chance of finding those diamonds. Macrado could see nothing to interfere with his continuing on the adventure alone. In fact, he had schemed to continue the venture alone.