"He'll go and get his light put out—and he won't help Jack a damn bit," he told himself miserably, and went in. Life that day looked very hard to big-hearted Bill Wilson, and scarcely worth the trouble of living it.
It broke the heart of Dade Hunter to see how near the sinister procession was to the live oak that had come to be looked upon as the gallows of the Vigilance Committee; a gallows whose broad branches sheltered from rain and sun alike the unmarked graves of the men who had come there shuddering and looked upon it, and shuddering had looked no more upon anything in this world.
Until he was near enough to risk betraying his haste by the hoof-beats of his horse, Dade kept Surry at a run. Upon the crest of the slope which the procession was leisurely descending, he slowed to a lope; and so overtook the crowd that straggled always out to the hangings, came they ever so frequent. Reeling in the saddle, he came up with the stragglers, singing and marking time with a half-empty bottle of whisky.
The few who knew him looked at one another askance.
"Say, Hunter, ain't yuh got any feelin's? That there's your pardner on the hoss," one loose-jointed miner expostulated.
"Sure, I got feelin's! Have a d-drink?" Dade leered drunkenly at the speaker. "Jack's—no good anyway. Tol' 'im he'd get hung if he—have a d-drink?"
The loose-jointed one would, and so would his neighbors. The Captain glanced back at them, gave a contemptuous lift to his upper lip and faced again to the front.
Dade uncoiled his riata with aimless, fumbling fingers and swung the noose facetiously toward the bottle, uptilted over the eager mouth of a weazened little Irishman. He caught bottle and hand together, let them go with a quick flip of the rawhide and waggled his head in apology.
"Excuse me, Mike," he mumbled, while the Irishman stopped and glared. "Go awn! Have a drink. Mighta spilled it—shame!"
Jack looked back, his heart thumping heavily at sound of the voice, thick though it was and maudlin. Dade drunk and full of coarse foolery was a sight he had never before looked upon; but Dade's presence, drunk or sober, made his own plight seem a shade less hopeless. He did not dare a second glance, with Davis and the Captain walking at either stirrup; but he listened anxiously—listened and caught a drunken mumble from the rear, and a chorus of chuckling laughs coming after.