“The rescuers didn’t take him out,” said Harshaw, sharply.
The woman looked up, surprised; her hand shook a little with the bread in it; she was evidently capable of appreciating the weight of responsibility.
“Why, Lethe Sayles told me so,” she said.
“Lethe Sayles!” he exclaimed, perplexed. Her name instantly recalled Gwinnan—incongruous association of ideas!—and Mink’s persuasion of Gwinnan’s enmity toward him for her sake. Had she known the judge before? he wondered. Had Mink some foundation for his jealousy beyond the disasters of the trial? Somehow, this false representation to the people who knew that the lad was not drowned had, he thought, an undeveloped significance in view of that fact. Harshaw resolved that there should be no question of the substantiality of Tad’s apparition when the case should come up to be tried anew. He forgot himself for the moment. “I’ll produce you in open court, my fine fellow,” he said, swaggering to his feet and striking the boy on his fat shoulder. “That’s what I’m bound for!”
He had naught in mind save the details of his case. He regarded the incident only as the symmetrical justification of his conduct of the evidence and his evolution of the theory of the crime. He did not pause to reflect on its slight and ineffective value to Mink himself, to whom an acquittal could only mean that a few years were not to be added to the long term of imprisonment which already impended for him. He did not even notice that the woman rose suddenly from her knees, went toward the door, and beckoned in the burly young fellow who had appeared on the porch at intervals, covertly surveying the scene within.
“Naw, sir,” she exclaimed, with an agitated, accelerated method of speech and a fierce eye, “ye won’t! Ye ain’t a-goin’ ter kem in hyar an’ spy us out an’ perduce us in court, fur yer profit an’ our destruction.” Harshaw turned and gazed at her, with a flushing, indignant face. The young man had his rifle in his hand; she herself was taking down a gun which lay in a rack above the fireplace. “Ye warn’t axed ter kem in hyar, but it be our say-so ez ter when ye go out.”
The surprise of it overpowered him for a moment; he stood blankly staring at them. The next, he realized that his pistols were in the holster with his saddle, and his gun that he had placed beside the door had been removed. He was not, however, deficient in physical courage.
“Take care how you attempt to detain me!” he blustered.
She laughed in return, shrilly, mirthlessly; as he looked at her he was sure that she would not hesitate to draw the trigger that her long, lean fingers, bedaubed with the corn-meal batter, already touched.