Julian Kilman

“ I calculate near every soul in the district turned out and made it a sort of general holiday and lay-off, for certain it is that no one cared anything about Black Jean himself.
Every inch of the land hereabouts was searched; they poked along the entire length of that earthquake crack, and in the clearings, and in the bush, looking for fresh-turned earth. But they could not find a thing—not a thing!
Now you gentlemen know that you can't convict a person for murder unless you have got positive proof that murder's been done—the dead body itself. ”

“ They can't figure out how the mischief a little ninety-pound woman could have lugged those two bodies after she shot them with my father's rifle, the distance from the cabin to the kiln—a good half mile and more.
They point out that the body of Black Jean must have weighted over two hundred pounds, not to mention that the other woman was big and fat. But they make me weary.
It is a simple as the nose on your face: The big one-eyed bear did the job for her! ”

“ The French-Canadian built his cabin across the crack, and as the woman quarreled with him about the bears sleeping in the cabin he made a trapdoor in the floor of the building and stuck a small log down it, so the bears could climb up and down from their den below.
The kiln, you can see for yourself, is a pit-kiln, so called because it is in the side of a hill and the limestone is fed from the top and the fuel from the bottom. Like a big chimney it works, and when Black Jean got the fire started and going good it would roar up through the stone and cook it. ”