Rankin never had a very clear idea of what happened next. Somehow or other he had torn the coat off the man's back, had bound him with the lasso to a corner of the haywagon, and was standing over him, cowhide in hand, panting with rage and the desire for vengeance. The gaunt horse had moved off a few paces, and stood like an apparition, gazing with spectral indifference at the scene.
Rankin raised his arm and brought the whiplash whistling down upon the broad shoulders. There was a strange guttural sound, and the figure before him seemed to collapse and sink, a dead weight, down into the encircling rope. Rankin's arm was arrested in mid-air.
"Stand up, you hound, or I'll murder you!" he hissed between his teeth.
But the figure hung there like a log. The spectral horse sniffed strangely.
A swift horror seized upon Rankin. He grasped the heavy shoulder and shook it roughly. It was like shaking—hush! he dared not think what!
Rankin flung his whip to the ground, and wildly, feverishly, untied the rope. It was a difficult thing to do, the sinking of the body having tightened the knots. At last they yielded, and the dead weight tumbled in a heap before him. Even in his wild horror Rankin thought how the woman had fallen just so in a heap on the ground a few minutes before. The thought put life into his heart.
The gaunt horse had taken a step forward and was sniffing at that heap on the ground, mouthing the limp trousers: a few wisps of hay had clung to them. Rankin watched the weird scene. He knew that that was a dead man before him; nothing could make that surer.
He tried to lift the body and carry it toward the house; he could not do it. It was not the weight, it was the repulsion that lamed him.
He stalked to the cabin and flung open the door. The woman crouched in a corner with her six children about her; seven pitiful scared faces were lifted to his. He stepped in and closed the door behind him.
"Dennis Rumpety is dead," he stated, in a hard, unnatural voice. It seemed to him as if those awful words must echo round the globe, rousing all the powers of the land against him, striking terror to the hearts at home.