A West Fraternity man came in while they were talking; one Zeke Pitkin, a mild man, and timid. He listened to their words, and asked at last, “Evered?”
They nodded; and Pitkin laughed in an awkward way. “He killed my bull to-day,” he said.
Will Bissell asked quickly, “Killed your bull? You have him do it?”
Pitkin nodded, gulping at his Adam’s apple. “Getting ugly, the bull was,” he said. “I didn’t like to handle him. Decided to beef him. So I sent for Evered, and he came over.”
He looked round at them, laughed uneasily. “He scared me,” he said.
Motley asked slowly. “What happened, Zeke?”
Pitkin rubbed one hand nervously along his leg. “We-ell,” he explained. “I’m nervous like. Git excited easy. So when he come I told him the bull was ugly. Told him to look out for it.
“He just only looked at me in that hard way of his. I had the bull in the barn; and he went in where it was and fetched it out in the barn floor. Left the bull standing there and begun to fix his tackle to h’ist it up.
“I didn’t want to stay in there with the bull. I was scared of it—it loose there, nothing to hold it. And Evered kept working round it, back to the beast half the time. Nothing to stop it tossing him. I didn’t like to get out, but I didn’t want to stay. And I guess I talked too much. Kept telling him to hurry, and asking him why he didn’t kill it and all. Got him mad, I guess.”
The man shivered a little, his eyes dim with the memory of the moment. He took off his hat and rubbed his hand across his head, and Motley said, “He did kill it?”