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Now then, tell me, was any person present during your last conversation with Captain Leclere?" "No; we were quite alone." "Could your conversation have been overheard by any one?" "It might, for the cabin door was open and stay; now I recollect, Danglars himself passed by just as Captain Leclere was giving me the packet for the grand marshal."
No evidence had been found to back up his statements. They told him to make his will, for he possessed a fifty-thousand dollar Sunrise claim, and they were a law-abiding as well as a law-giving breed. Leclere shrugged his shoulders. "Bot one t'ing," he said; "a leetle, w'at you call, favour a leetle favour, dat is eet. I gif my feefty t'ousan' dollair to de church.
A moment or was it an eternity? of horrible silence. Then the body struck the rough stones at the foot of the tower with a thick, soft dunt, and lay crumpled up among them, without a groan, without a movement. When the other men, who had hurried up the ladders in terror, found Leclere, he was peering over the edge of the scaffold, wiping the blood from his eyes, trying to see down.
It was frightful, and for twenty-four hours after, Batard was nervous and unstrung, starting at common sounds, tripping over his own shadow, but, withal, vicious and masterful with his team-mates. Nor did he show signs of a breaking spirit. Rather did he grow more grim and taciturn, biding his time with an inscrutable patience that began to puzzle and weigh upon Leclere.
It was hard on Vaillantcoeur, of course, to see Leclere going ahead, getting rich, clearing off the mortgage on his farm, laying up money with the notary Bergeron, who acted as banker for the parish it was hard to look on at this, while he himself stood still, or even slipped back a little, got into debt, had to sell a bit of the land that his father left him.
Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls. Vaillantcoeur came up, swearing mad. Three or four other workmen were standing about. "Look here, you Leclere," said he, "I tried one of the cross-girders yesterday afternoon and it wouldn't go. The templet on the north is crooked crooked as your teeth. We had to let the girder down again.
Sure enough, they found the long timber was not half seasoned and had corkscrewed itself out of shape at least three inches. Vaillantcoeur sat on the sill of the doorway and did not even look at them while they were measuring. When they called out to him what they had found, he strode over to them. "It's a dam' lie," he said, sullenly. "Prosper Leclere, you slipped the string.
To kick the box out from under would leave him dancing on the air. "Now for the dog," said Webster Shaw, sometime mining engineer. "You'll have to rope him, Slackwater." Leclere grinned. Slackwater took a chew of tobacco, rove a running noose, and proceeded leisurely to coil a few turns in his hand. He paused once or twice to brush particularly offensive mosquitoes from off his face.
Then Leclere picked up the whip and proceeded almost to cut him to pieces, at each stroke of the lash crying: "Dis taim Ah break you! Eh? By GAR! Ah break you!"
It was Sunday afternoon, the regular time for fun, but no one dared to take hold of him. He looked too big. He expressed his opinion of the camp. "No fun in this shanty, HE? I suppose that little Leclere he makes you others work, and say your prayers, and then, for the rest, you can sleep. HE! Well, I am going to make a little fun for you, my boys.
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