The Secret of the Storm Country

At ten o'clock in the morning, the day after Andy Bishop was fitted into Tessibel's straw tick, a covered runabout wound its way along the lower boulevard running to Glenwood. Two men were seated in it, solemn, dark-browed men, with dull eyes and heavy faces. The man holding the reins was heavy set, square shouldered, and more sternly visaged than his companion. Some one had said of Howard Burnett, that the Powers, in setting him up, had used steel cables for his muscles and iron for his bones; and surely there was a grim grip to his jaw that presaged evil to those opposing him.

"Devilish queer," he muttered, after a long silence, "how that little dwarf ever disappeared the way he has, isn't it, Todd?"

"Not so strange after all," protested Todd. "Andy Bishop could crawl into a rabbit hole and still give the rabbit room to sleep."

"That's true, too, but you'd think his deformity would prevent his getting very far.... Now wouldn't you?"

"Well, I don't know about that, either." The speaker struck a match under the lapel of his coat, and cupping the tiny flame in his hand, held it up to the dead cigar in his mouth, and added between puffs, "Human nature's a funny thing!... Now Andy's got a kind a pleasin' way with him ... even if he is deformed, ... and he's got a peach of a voice. Why, he speaks as soft as a woman.... I wouldn't want him to ask me to do anything I was set against if I didn't want to do it."

"Rotten rubbish!" spat out Burnett. "I don't give a tinker's damn about his voice. It's up to me to run the dwarf to earth, and I'm goin' to do it."

After a very long silence, Todd turned to Burnett.

"But what does get me is why the five thousand Waldstricker's put up, ain't been bait to catch Bishop before this," he said ruminatively.

"Well, it hain't, that's evident," growled Burnett, setting his teeth.

As a rabbit lifts its head, frightened at unusual sights and sounds, so Jake Brewer lifted a startled face as Howard Burnett pulled up his horse suddenly at the squatter's side. The warden stopped the man's progress by lifting his hand.

"Say, you, wait a minute there," he added to his imperative gesture.

Jake paused, curious and attentive.

"Haven't seen a dwarf, anywhere, named Bishop, have you?" Burnett shot forth, leaning toward Brewer.

The squatter shook his head. "There be some Bishops round here," he retorted surlily, "but there ain't no dwarf as I know of by that name."

"Where's the road leadin' down to that row of shacks by the lake?" demanded Burnett. "Ain't there a lot of squatters living there?"