The Riddle of Three-Way Creek by Ridgwell Cullum

Lightning resettled himself upon his box. He was leaning forward in an attitude of alert concentration, his arms folded across his knees, with an elbow grasped in the palm of each of his hands. He remained unmoving, except for the inevitable chew of tobacco which engaged the rusty remains of his teeth. His mind was correspondingly active.

Midnight had long since come and gone. The night was brilliant, and little enough was left for the shadows of night to conceal. The farm and its surroundings were in full view from where he sat. The bluff beyond the grass-trail was sharply silhouetted, a deep, black background to the south and west. Away to the right of him the corral, where the cows were peacefully slumbering on the accumulations of despoiled hay feed, was sharply outlined. So, too, with the hay corral, that stood nearly empty and ready for the new season's grass. The barn beside him rose sharply against the night sky, where its thatched ridge lifted above the sturdy log walls. And then, beyond that, the whispering tree-tops of the bluff stood up, where once the dead George Marton had confronted the emaciated figure of the starving fugitive from justice.