The Coolidge examiner., 1932-01-08


as its driver shut off the power and
set his brakes. The post was taken
out and the broken car went over
the embankment into the thorough
fare. The hiding man came out of
his place of concealment. He looked
into the thorOUghfare into which the
car had gone. In the darkness there
was nothing to be seen. He replaced
the red lights where they had been
and returned to the Cadillac. The
driver brought it back into the road,
drove over the plank detour and on
south at high speed.
AS if there had been no wintry
interruption, the following day, Oc-
tober 4, was another of the brilliant
warm days of the Wisconsin au-
tumn. White mists arose from lakes
and thorOughfares in the chill of
the morning as the sun came up,
but they cleared away. The snow
mantle on the pine, balsam and
spruce dropped in thawing and the
ground covering melted quickly into
the sandy soil.
The construction gangs at the
bridge came on the job and had
been at work a half-hOur before a
foreman saw the top of a sedan in
the thoroughfare. 1t was by a pine
trunk which stood two feet above
the water Some drift of dead limbs
had washed against it and had OBJ
scured its outlines. The foreman
looked at it a moment or two before
he was certain that it must be evil
dence of road accident. Then he
called his men. One entered the
water and attached chains to the
car. A tractor dragged it out, and
the death in it was disclosed. The
wrecked car and the body were sent
into Eagle River, where the owner
of the Buick identified 1t as one
rented from his garage and the dead
man as the one who had taken II
, out.
Further Identification came when
the body of Preston Brown was
brought from Lac Vieux to Eagle
River, rhe men from Little Butte
lodge looked at the victim of the
bridge accident and found that he
was the man on whose hunting
knife Brown had been impaled.
They were concerned in part for
their own conduct, but they agreed
that Browns death had been acci-
dental. They had been drinking,
Brown. the stranger and all of them
except Jim, the Menominee. Al
though they had drunk a great deal,
everybody had been good-natured
Brown and the stranger had been
cordial. There had been some rough
play, scuffles, some wrestling. dane
ing and a great deal OF Dragging
and loud talking.
The guides and caretakers had
roughed one another, tipped one an
other out of chairs, come TO grips
and thrown one another about the
room and had wrestled over the
floor. 1t wouldn't have happened if
it hadn't been just that kind of
snowy afternoon when a little drink
ing seemed to be about right.
Rough, but nothing out of the ordi-
nary for such an occasion except
possibly the knife-throwing.
The MenOminee had started that.
He had not been drinking and he
hadn't been tussling, but after there
had been some Dragging incidental
to the rough fun the Indian began
pitching his knife at the wall. Pos
sibly he wanted to show how dan
gerous his dexterity could be. He
called two knots in the wall the
eyes of man. The guides and
caretakers tried their skill at it, but
the MenOminee was easily the best.
Brown did not throw. He even
demonstrated that it might hurt
some one. The stranger teased him
a bit bruskly about his prudence
The stranger also made one throw
with his hunting knife. 1t was a
large two-bladed knife, blade open
ing from each end of the handle
Both blades were open as he threw
it. He wasn't expert, but he i'm
bedded a blade solidly in the wall
something over four feet from the
floor. His effort was awkward The
men laughed at him and turned to
have another drink and forgot the
knife in the wall. Later the strang-
er teased Brown into a scuffle in
which they suddenly began to exert
themselves to the limit of their
strength, almost angrily as men will
in adult foOlishness of the kind.
The unfortunate end came when
Brown was thrown against the for
gotten knife blade. He gasped,
clutched his breast and sagged at
the knees. Then he fell. The other
men were too astonished to under
stand it at first. Then they were
sObered and Mortified. The stranger
must have lost his judgment in his
pODStprDat tiOD oud raporco which