Turning, they saw
Lige standing on the threshold of the door that led to the street. In his
hand he held the bridle of the horse he had ridden across the sidewalk,
and that now stood panting, with lowered head, half through the doorway,
beside his master. Lige was hatless, splashed with mud from head to foot;
his jaw was set, his teeth ground together; his eyes burned under red
lids, and his hair lay tossed and damp on his brow. "I keep out of no
man's way," he repeated, hoarsely.
"I heard you, Mr. Tibbs, but I've got too much to do, while you loaf and
gas and drink over Lum Landis's bar--I've got other business than keeping
out of Hartley Bowlder's way. I'm looking for John Harkless. He was the
best man we had in this ornery hole, and he was too good for us, and so
we've maybe let him get killed, and maybe I'm to blame. But I'm going to
find him, and if he's hurt--damn _me_! I'm going to have a hand on the
rope that lifts the men that did it, if I have to go to Rouen to put it
there! After that I'll answer for my fault, not before!"
He threw himself on his horse and was gone. Soon the room was emptied, as
the patrons of the bar returned to the search, and only Mr. Wilkerson and
the landlord remained, the bar being the professional office, so to speak,
of both.
Wilkerson had a chair in a corner, where he sat chanting a funeral march
in a sepulchral murmur, allowing a parenthetical _hic_ to punctuate the
dirge in place of the drum.
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