“What’s the idea?” the sheriff demanded of McClump. “Are you carrying a bodyguard around with you?”
The two other deputies, thus informed as to who “Mac” referred to this time, went back to their cribbage game.
“We got a city slicker here to catch our firebug for us,” Tarr told his deputy. “But we got to tell him what it’s all about first.”
McClump and I had worked together on an express robbery, several months before. He’s a rangy, towheaded youngster of twenty-five or six, with all the nerve in the world—and most of the laziness.
“Ain’t the Lord good to us?”
He had himself draped across a chair by now—always his first objective when he comes into a room.
“Well, here’s how she stands: This fellow Thornburgh’s house was a couple miles out of town, on the old county road—an old frame house. About midnight, night before last, Jeff Pringle—the nearest neighbor, a half-mile or so to the east—saw a glare in the sky from over that way, and phoned in the alarm; but by the time the fire wagons got there, there wasn’t enough of the house left to bother about. Pringle was the first of the neighbors to get to the house, and the roof had already fell in then.
“Nobody saw anything suspicious—no strangers hanging around or nothing. Thornburgh’s help just managed to save themselves, and that was all. They don’t know much about what happened—too scared, I reckon. But they did see Thornburgh at his window just before the fire got him. A fellow here in town—name of Handerson—saw that part of it too. He was driving home from Wayton, and got to the house just before the roof caved in.
“The fire department people say they found signs of gasoline. The Coonses, Thornburgh’s help, say they didn’t have no gas on the place. So