“Mrs. Beale knows Mink Lorey ez well ez I do,” declared the constable.
“Mought hev been foolin’ us some,” suggested the sheriff, suspiciously.
“She hain’t got no call,” the constable reasoned. As he partly stood on a sharp projection, and partly hung by one arm to the ledges of the niche, he took a plug of tobacco from his pocket and perilously gnawed at it.
“Waal, I reckon he ain’t round hyar-abouts,” said the sheriff, with an intonation of disappointment “We hed better push on.”
The double-headed monster, chewing as he went, the action reproduced in frightful pantomime on the floor of the cavern, slowly withdrew. There was heavy breathing; the sound of falling clods and fragments of rock, and of straining bushes and roots as the descending officer clutched them. A sudden final thud announced that he had sprung upon his feet on level ground.
A momentary interval, a clatter of hoofs, and the file of horsemen, with their mounted shadows erect upon the vertical cliffs of the rock-bound road, passed slowly along the wild, narrow way. Long after they had disappeared the sound of the hoof-beats intruded upon the stillness, and died away, and again smote the air with dull iteration, reverberating from distant crags of the winding road.
When all was still, Mink’s mind turned again to his perplexities with a sharpened sense of the necessity of decision. The project which Alethea had suggested began to shape itself in his mind in full detail, as he lay there and thought it over. The alternative of skulking about to avoid arrest was too doubtful and limited to be contemplated.
“The sheriff air a-ridin’ now,” he said, “an’ the constable too—an’ what made ’em fetch along fower other men ez a posse?” he broke off suddenly, recognizing the incongruity.
His lip curled with satisfaction. “They mus’ hev been powerful ’feared o’ me,” he said, his heart swelling with self-importance, “ter think ’twould take six men ter arrest me fur a leetle job like that.”