one they call Buddy--he heared a
cowbell over in the swamp and so he went to look; Bristow's got cows, as
you know, and one or two of 'em is belled. And he kept on followin'
after the sound of it till he got way down into the thickest part of
them cypress slashes that's near the middle there; and right there he
run acrost it--this body.

"But, suh, squire, it wasn't no cow at all. No, suh; it was a buzzard
with a cowbell on his neck--that's whut it was. Yes, suh; that there
same old Belled Buzzard he's come back agin and is hangin' round. They
tell me he ain't been seen round here since the year of the yellow
fever--I don't remember myself, but that's whut they tell me. The
niggers over on the other side are right smartly worked up over it. They
say--the niggers do--that when the Belled Buzzard comes it's a sign of
bad luck for somebody, shore!"

The constable drove on, talking on, garrulous as a guinea hen. The
squire didn't heed him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened only to
those busy inner voices filling his mind with thundering portents. Even
so, his ear was first to catch above the rattle of the buggy wheels the
far-away, faint tonk-tonk! They were about half-way to Bristow's place
then. He gave no sign, and it was perhaps half a minute before his
companion heard it too.

The constable jerked the horse to a standstill and craned his neck over
his shoulder.

"Well, by doctors!" he cried, "if there ain't the old scoundrel now,
right here behind us! I kin see him plain as day--he's got an old
cowbell hitched to his neck; and he's shy a couple of feathers out of
one wing. By doctors, that's somethin' you won't see every day! In all
my born days I ain't never seen the beat of that!"

Squire Gathers did not look; he only cowered back farther under the
buggy top. In the pleasing excitement of the moment his companion took
no heed, though, of anything except the Belled Buzzard.

"Is he followin' us?" asked the squire in a curiously flat, weighted
voice.

"Which--him?" answered the constable, still stretching his neck. "No,
he's gone now--gone off to the left--jest a-zoomin', like he'd done
forgot somethin'."

And Bristow's place was to the left! But there might still be time. To
get the inquest over and the body underground--those were the main
things. Ordinarily humane in his treatment of stock, Squire Gathers
urged the constable to greater speed. The horse was lathered and his
sides heaved wearily as the