Smith and Mr. Ribshaw" (nodding to the
man with the rawhide whip) "are both right. What good are we doing here?
What we want to know is what's happened to Mr. Harkless. It looks just now
like the shell-men might have done it. Let's find out what they done.
Scatter and hunt for him. 'Soon as anything is known for certain,
Hibbard's mill whistle will blow three times. Keep on looking till it
does. _Then_" he finished, with a barely perceptible scornful smile at the
attorney, "_then_ we can decide on what had ought to be done."
Six-Cross-Roads lay dark and steaming in the sun that morning. The forge
was silent, the saloon locked up, the roadway deserted, even by the pigs.
The broken old buggy stood rotting in the mud without a single lean,
little old man or woman--such were the children of the Cross-Roads--to
play about it. The fields were empty, and the rag-stuffed windows blank,
under the baleful glance of the horsemen who galloped by at intervals,
muttering curses, not always confining themselves to muttering them. Once,
when the deputy sheriff rode through alone, a tattered black hound, more
wolf than dog, half-emerged, growling, from beneath one of the tumble-down
barns, and was jerked back into the darkness by his tail, with a snarl
fiercer than his own, while a gun-barrel shone for a second as it swung
for a stroke on the brute's head.
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