"This evidently is not the wagon in question," said Browdie, disappointed.
"I'll follow them a bit," volunteered Ronan, the younger and the more active of the two officers. "Seems to me they'll bear watching."
Indeed, as the melancholy cortège fared down and down the steep road, dwindling in the sheeny distance, the covert and half-suppressed laughter of the sepulchral escort was of so keen a relish that it was well that the scraping of the locked wheel aided the distance to mask the incongruous sound.
"What ailed you-uns ter name _me_ as the corpus, 'Gene Barker?" demanded Walter Wyatt, when he had regained the capacity of coherent speech.
"Oh, I hed ter do suddint murder on somebody," declared the driver, all bluff and reassured and red-faced again, "an' I couldn't think quick of nobody else. Besides, I belt a grudge ag'in' you fer not stuffin' mo' straw 'twixt them jimmyjohns in the coffin-box."
"That's a fac'. Ye air too triflin' ter be let ter live, Watt," cried one of their comrades. "I hearn them jugs clash tergether in the coffin-box when 'Gene checked the team up suddint, I tell you. An' them men sure 'peared ter me powerful suspectin'."
"_I_ hearn the clash of them jimmyjohns," chimed in the driver. "I really thunk my hour war come. Some informer must hev set them men ter spyin' round fer moonshine."
"Oh, surely nobody wouldn't dare," urged one of the group, uneasily; for the identity of an informer was masked in secrecy, and his fate, when discovered, was often gruesome.
"They couldn't hev noticed the clash of them jimmyjohns, nohow," declared the negligent Watt, nonchalantly. "But namin' _me_ fur the dead one! Supposin' they air revenuers fur true, an' hed somebody along, hid out in the bresh, ez war acquainted with me by sight----"
"Then they'd hev been skeered out'n thar boots, that's all," interrupted the self-sufficient 'Gene. "They would hev 'lowed they hed viewed yer brazen ghost, bold ez brass, standin' at the head of yer own coffin-box."
"Or mebbe they mought hev recognized the Wyatt favor, ef they warn't acquainted with _me_," persisted Watt, with his unique sense of injury.
Eugene Barker defended the temerity of his inspiration. "They would hev jes thought ye war kin ter the deceased, an' attendin' him ter his long home."