Apparently there was some general enmity in the
old man toward the whole Tolliver clan, and maybe he had used the
reward to fool Hale as to his real motive. And then Hale quietly
learned that long ago the Tollivers bitterly opposed the Red Fox's
marriage to a Tolliver-that Rufe, when a boy, was always teasing
the Red Fox and had once made him dance in his moccasins to the
tune of bullets spitting about his feet, and that the Red Fox had
been heard to say that old Dave had cheated his wife out of her
just inheritance of wild land; but all that was long, long ago,
and apparently had been mutually forgiven and forgotten. But it
was enough for Hale, and one night he mounted his horse, and at
dawn he was at the place of ambush with his horse hidden in the
bushes. The rocks for the ambush were waist high, and the twigs
that had been thrust in the crevices between them were withered.
And there, on the hypothesis that the Red Fox was the assassin,
Hale tried to put himself, after the deed, into the Red Fox's
shoes. The old man had turned up on guard before noon--then he
must have gone somewhere first or have killed considerable time in
the woods.
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