In silence Tom and Buck rode away from Bill Tolliver’s, up the mountain trail that led to the Rainse clearing. The redheaded warden was still too furious to talk, and Tom was occupied with his own thoughts. Bill Tolliver had been his good friend since Tom could remember, and his father’s before that. Now that friendship was ended. A warden’s job was certainly no rose-strewn path.
“If it takes me from now until hell freezes solid,” the warden burst out, “I’m going to find out who got Johnny Magruder!”
“How do you think it happened, Buck?”
“Johnny did come to Martinton. He started over the Klesa Trail. He was bushwhacked there. It must have been by at least two men because one man couldn’t do it alone. They used knives to make it look like the boar’s work, and then planted those boar trac
