Though the fields
had been trampled down in many places by the searching parties, he felt
sure of the direction taken by the Cross-Roads men, and he perceived that
the searchers had mistaken the tracks he followed for those of earlier
parties in the hunt. On the embankment he saw a number of men, walking
west and examining the ground on each side, and a long line of people
following them out from town. He stopped. He held the fate of Six-Cross-
Roads in his hand and he knew it.
He knew that if he spoke, his evidence would damn the Cross-Roads, and
that it meant that more than the White-Caps would be hurt, for the Cross-
Roads would fight. If he had believed that the dissemination of his
knowledge could have helped Harkless, he would have called to the men near
him at once; but he had no hope that the young man was alive. They would
not have dragged him out to their shanties wounded, or as a prisoner; such
a proceeding would have courted detection, and, also, they were not that
kind; they had been "looking for him" a long time, and their one idea was
to kill him.
And Harkless, for all his gentleness, was the sort of man, Briscoe
believed, who would have to be killed before he could be touched. Of one
thing the old gentleman was sure; the editor had not been tied up and
whipped while yet alive. In spite of his easy manners and geniality, there
was a dignity in him that would have made him kill and be killed before
the dirty fingers of a Cross-Roads "White-Cap" could have been laid upon
him in chastisement.
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