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The very first day I slipped off a foot-log while crossing a saucy little mountain brook and bruised my shin, tore my trousers and injured my camera. Like most small boys, I regretted that gratuitous bath. I began to wonder if Slide-Rock Pete was so crazy after all.
On this Saturday evening in the lovers' month of June he had walked Ardea around and about through the fragrant summer wood of the upper creek valley, retracing, in part, the footsteps of the boy whose fishing had been spoiled and the little girl who was to be bullied into submission; and so rambling they had come at length to the old moss-grown foot-log which had been a newly-felled tree in the former time.
It was jes comin dark, an when I got to de crick an start across on de foot-log, dere on de other end o' dat log was a man wid his haid cut off an layin plum over on his shoulder. He look at me, kinda pitiful, an don't say a word but I closely never waited to see what he gonna talk about. I pure flew back home.
But it was no time to speculate, with a load of lumber grinding into his sore shoulder, so Bruce hurried on across the slippery foot-log and up a steep pitch to see the carpenter charging through the brush brandishing a saw as if it was a sabre. "I want my 'time," he shouted when he saw Bruce. "Him or me has got to quit. I won't work with that feller I won't take orders from the likes o' him!
Folks said you was changeable, but I never once believed it till last night on the road. I have fixed it so everybody will think my death was accidental. I've been warned time and again about that foot-log, and nobody will suspicion the truth. You must never mention it to a soul. It is my last and only request. It would go harder with mother if she knew that. Good-bye, John.
"Tom, isn't this the same foot-log you made me walk that day when you were trying to convince me that you were the meanest boy that ever breathed?" asked Ardea, gathering her skirts preparatory to the stream crossing. "It is. But you didn't walk it, as you may remember: you fell off. Wait a second and give me those azaleas. I'll go first and take your hand."
"Do you know Anderson?" some one asked. "Of course I do," responded the marshal loftily. "Well, what were they for, then?" "I'm not givin' any clews away. You just wait a while and see if I'm not right." And they were satisfied that the detective knew all about it. After crossing the foot-log the party was divided as to which direction it should take.
He came to the creek wherein the old horse had stood to cool his hot knees; he crossed the foot-log and was about to step down again into the road when he heard the furious galloping of horses and the rattle of a buggy. The team plunged into the creek, not directly at the ford; the buggy struck a rock and flew into fragments; the horses came plunging on, leaving a man in the water.
"There's a foot-log high and dry, and you can walk across, but you can't get the horse and buggy over," said one of the men. "Well, that's just what I'll have to do. Say, Mr. Officer, suppose you drive me down to the creek and then bring the horse back here to a livery stable. I'll pay you well for it. I must get to Crow's Cliff in fifteen minutes."
"All I ask is that you drive me to the foot-log that crosses the creek." The Pursuit Begins Fifteen minutes later Anderson Crow was parading proudly about the town. He had taken the stranger to the creek and had seen him scurry across the log to the opposite side, supplied with directions that would lead him to the nearest route through the swamps and timberland to Crow's Cliff.
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