Dibb Zane choked over his four fingers. “We might's well bust up this dab-dusted ole town ef he's gone.”
“I don't know what's come over that Cynthy Tipworthy,” said the landlord. “She's waited table on him last two year, and her brother Bud works at the 'Herald' office. She didn't say a word—only looked and looked and looked—like a crazy woman; then her and Bud went off together to hunt in the woods. They just tuck hold of each other's hands like——”
“That ain't nothin',” Homer Tibbs broke in. “You'd ort to've saw old Miz Hathaway, that widder woman next door to us, when she heard it. He had helped her to git her pension; and she tuck on worse 'n' anything I ever hear—lot worse 'n' when Hathaway died.”
“I reckon there ain't many crazier than them two Bowlders, father and son,” said the postmaster, wiping the drops from his beard as he set his glass on the bar. “They rid into town like a couple of wild Indians, the old man beatin' that gray mare o' theirn till she was one big welt, and he ain't natcherly no cruel man, either. I reckon Lige Willetts better keep out of Hartley's way.”
“I keep out of no man's way,” cried a voice behind him. Turning, they saw Lige standing on the threshold of the door that led to the street. In his hand he held the bridle of the horse he had ridden across the sidewalk, and that now stood panting, with lowered head, half through the doorway, beside his master. Lige was hatless, splashed with mud from head to foot; his jaw was set, his teeth ground together; his eyes burned under red lids, and his hair lay tossed and damp on his brow. “I keep out of no man's way,” he repeated, hoarsely.
“I heard you, Mr. Tibbs, but I've got too much to do, while you loaf and gas and drink over Lum Landis's bar—I've got other business than keeping out of Hartley Bowlder's way. I'm looking for John Harkless. He was the best man we had in this ornery hole, and he was too good for us, and so we've maybe let him get killed, and maybe I'm to blame. But I'm going to find him, and if he's hurt—damn me! I'm going to have a hand on the rope that lifts the men that did it, if I have to go to Rouen to put it there! After that I'll answer for my fault, not before!”
He threw himself on his horse and was gone. Soon the room was emptied, as the patrons of the bar returned to the search, and only Mr. Wilkerson and the landlord remained, the bar being the professional office, so to speak, of both.
Wilkerson had a chair in a corner, where he sat chanting a funeral march in a sepulchral murmur, allowing a parenthetical hic to punctuate the dirge in place of the drum. Whenever a batch of newcomers entered, he rose to drink with them; and, at such times, after pouring off his liquor with a rich melancholy, shedding tears after every swallow, he would make an exploring tour of the room on his way back to his corner, stopping to look under each chair inquiringly and ejaculate: “Why, where kin he be!” Then, shaking his head, he would observe sadly: “Fine young man, he was, too; fine young man. Pore fellow! I reckon we hain't a-goin' to git him.”
At eleven o'clock. Judge Briscoe dropped wearily from his horse at his own gate, and said to a wan girl who came running down the walk to meet him: “There is nothing, yet. I sent the telegram to your mother—to Mrs. Sherwood.”
Helen turned away without answering. Her face was very white and looked pinched about the mouth. She went back to where old Fisbee sat on the porch, his white head held between his two hands; he was rocking himself to and fro. She touched him gently, but he did not look up. She spoke to him.