I stole along on the soft, short grass till I judged I was near the spot. A low sobbing sound caught my ear. Instinctively I cocked one of my pistols, and held it in my right hand, creeping nearer and nearer, on hands and feet, till I came to something white, from which the sobbing came.
"I'm a friend," I said. "What's the matter?"
"I'm shot. Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do?" And a torrent of hysterical moaning followed from a woman's voice.
"My good woman," I said, "what has happened? Tell me quick!"
After a short time she was sufficiently calm to say, "My man has been murdered in that tent down there. When I was running away to give the alarm I was shot through the leg."
"Where is the man who did it?"
"In the tent. You can see it lighted up from where you stand."
"I will come back with help for you in a short time. Make no noise, as you value your life."
I went away like a shadow on tiptoe—a shade could not make less noise—and was soon at the back of the tent. It was lit by a candle. Through the thin canvas I could see a man with a fiddle on his knee. He took it up and tuned it. "Ha! ha!" he laughed, "I haven't played a tune for five years; but I'll have one now, in spite of all the fiends in hell." He struck a note or two, and glided into the tune of "Donnybrook Fair." "That's something like," he said. "Now for 'Rafferty's Wake!' That's the ticket! If I had a gallon of brandy I'd give him such a wake as has never been seen on Dead Horse, and make every man-jack on the place dance while I covered them with my pistol. Curse him! I wish I had never seen him. Only got ten ounces, and I was told he had made as much as five hundred." Then he played "Rafferty's Wake" again, but slid into the gloomy strains of "The Last Man."