The dawn was breaking as Clarence and Jim Hooker emerged together from the gate of the casa. Mr. Hooker looked sleepy. He had found, after his return from Fair Plains, that his host had an early engagement at Santa Inez, and he had insisted upon rising to see him off. It was with difficulty, indeed, that Clarence could prevent his accompanying him. Clarence had not revealed to Susy the night before the real object of his journey, nor did Hooker evidently suspect it, yet when the former had mounted his horse, he hesitated for an instant, extending his hand.
“If I should happen to be detained,” he began with a half smile.
But Jim was struggling with a yawn. “That's all right—don't mind us,” he said, stretching his arms. Clarence's hesitating hand dropped to his side, and with a light reckless laugh and a half sense of providential relief he galloped away.
What happened immediately thereafter during his solitary ride to Santa Inez, looking back upon it in after years, seemed but a confused recollection, more like a dream. The long stretches of vague distance, gradually opening clearer with the rising sun in an unclouded sky; the meeting with a few early or belated travelers and his unconscious avoidance of them, as if they might know of his object; the black shadows of foreshortened cattle rising before him on the plain and arousing the same uneasy sensation of their being waylaying men; the wondering recognition of houses and landmarks he had long been familiar with; his purposeless attempts to recall the circumstances in which he had known them—all these were like a dream. So, too, were the recollections of the night before, the episode with Susy, already mingled and blended with the memory of their previous past; his futile attempts to look forward to the future, always, however, abandoned with relief at the thought that the next few hours might make them unnecessary. So also was the sudden realization that Santa Inez was before him, when he had thought he was not yet halfway there, and as he dismounted before the Court House his singular feeling—followed, however, by no fear or distress—was that he had come so early to the rendezvous that he was not yet quite prepared for it.
This same sense of unreality pervaded his meeting with the deputy sheriff, at the news that the Federal judge had, as was expected, dismissed the prisoners on their own recognizances, and that Captain Pinckney was at the hotel at breakfast. In the like abstracted manner he replied to the one or two questions of the deputy, exhibited the pistols he had brought with him, and finally accompanied him to a little meadow hidden by trees, below the hotel, where the other principal and his seconds were awaiting them. And here he awoke—clear-eyed, keen, forceful, and intense!
So stimulated were his faculties that his sense of hearing in its acuteness took in every word of the conversation between the seconds, a few paces distant. He heard his adversary's seconds say carelessly to the deputy sheriff, “I presume this is a case where there will be no apology or mediation,” and the deputy's reply, “I reckon my man means business, but he seems a little queer.” He heard the other second laugh, and say lightly, “They're apt to be so when it's their first time out,” followed by the more anxious aside of the other second as the deputy turned away,—“Yes, but by G-d I don't like his looks!” His sense of sight was also so acute that having lost the choice of position, when the coin was tossed, and being turned with his face to the sun, even through the glare he saw, with unerring distinctness of outline, the black-coated figure of his opponent moved into range—saw the perfect outline of his features, and how the easy, supercilious smile, as he threw away his cigar, appeared to drop out of his face with a kind of vacant awe as he faced him. He felt his nerves become as steel as the counting began, and at the word “three,” knew he had fired by the recoil of the pistol in his leveled hand, simultaneously with its utterance. And at the same moment, still standing like a rock, he saw his adversary miserably collapse, his legs grotesquely curving inwards under him,—without even the dignity of death in his fall,—and so sink helplessly like a felled bull to the ground. Still erect, and lowering only the muzzle of his pistol, as a thin feather of smoke curled up its shining side, he saw the doctor and seconds run quickly to the heap, try to lift its limp impotence into shape, and let it drop again with the words, “Right through the forehead, by G-d!”
“You've done for him,” said the deputy, turning to Clarence with a singular look of curiosity, “and I reckon you had better get out of this mighty quick. They didn't expect it; they're just ragin'; they may round on you—and”—he added, more slowly, “they seem to have just found out who you are.”
Even while he was speaking, Clarence, with his quickened ear, heard the words, “One of Hamilton Brant's pups” “Just like his father,” from the group around the dead man. He did not hesitate, but walked coolly towards them. Yet a certain fierce pride—which he had never known before—stirred in his veins as their voices hushed and they half recoiled before him.
“Am I to understand from my second, gentlemen,” he said, looking round the group, “that you are not satisfied?”
“The fight was square enough,” said Pinckney's second in some embarrassment, “but I reckon that he,” pointing to the dead man, “did not know who you were.”