Manuel was a good boy. But tell me now, is it that
_cachorra_?"
Here was something out of their calculations; something for them,
mentally, to chew on. Mystification is a good thing sometimes. It
gives the brain a fillip, stirs memory, puts the gears of
imagination in mesh. One man, an old, tobacco-chewing fellow, began
to stare harder at the face on the floor. Something moved in his
intellect.
"No, but look here now, by God----"
He had even stopped chewing. But he was forestalled by another.
"Say now, if it don't look like that fellow Wood, himself. The bank
fellow--that was burned--remember? Himself."
"That _cachorra_ was not burned. Not that Wood. You darned fool!"
Boaz spoke from his chair. They hardly knew his voice, emerging from
its long silence; it was so didactic and arid.
"That _cachorra_ was not burned. It was my boy that was burned. It
was that _cachorra_ called my boy upstairs. That _cachorra_ killed
my boy. That _cachorra_ put his clothes on my boy, and he set my
house on fire. I knew that all the time. Because when I heard those
feet come out of my house and go away, I knew they were the feet of
that _cachorra_ from the bank. I did not know where he was going to.
Something said to me--you better ask him where he is going to.
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