time I stop at
this ford and think of your father's death? There's things about it I'll
never understand, I reckon."

Enoch Harding started and flashed a quick glance at his friend. "What
things?" he asked.

"Well, lad, mainly that Jonas Harding, who was as quick on the trail and
as good a woodsman as myself, should be worsted by a mad buck; it seems
downright impossible, Nuck."

"I know. But there could be no mistake about it, 'Siah. There were the
hoof-marks--and there was no bullet wound on the body, only those gashes
made by the critter's horns. Simon Halpen----"

Bolderwood raised his hand quickly. "Nay, lad! don't utter evil even
about that Yorker. We all know he was anigh here when your father died.
He was seen at Bennington the night before, and later crossed James
Breckenridge's farm on his way to Albany. Black enemy as he is to you
and yourn, there's naught to be gained by accusing him of Jonas' death.
It would be impossible. There was not, as you say, a bullet wound upon
your father's body. There was not a mark of man's footstep near the lick
here but your father's own. How else, then, could he have been killed
but by the charge of the buck?"

"You say yourself that father was far too sharp to so be taken by
surprise," muttered the boy.

"Aye--that is so. But the facts are there, lad. I s'arched the ground
over--I headed the band of scouts who found him--remember that! Nobody
had been near the lick but Jonas. There wasn't a footmark for rods
around. Even an Injin couldn't have got near enough to strike Jonas down
with his gun-butt----"

"You believe that wound on his head, then, was made by no deer's
antler?" exclaimed Enoch, eagerly.

"Tut, tut! You jump too quick," said Bolderwood, turning his face away.
"That's never well. Allus look b'fore ye leap, Nuck. My 'pinion be that
your father struck his head on a stone in falling----"

"Where is there a stone here?" demanded the boy, with a speaking gesture
of his disengaged hand. "I saw that deep wound in father's skull. I
never believed a buck did that."

"And yet there was naught but the prints of the buck's hoofs in the soil
here--be sure of that. The ground was trampled all about as though the
fight had been desp'rate--as indeed it must have been."

"But that blow on the head?" reiterated Enoch.

"Ah, lad, I can't understand that. The wound certainly was mainly like a
blow from a gun-stock," admitted Bolderwood.

"Then Simon Halpen compassed