The searchers were hard at it until late into the night; never a clue to encourage them, never a hope to lure them on.
More than once they flagged, these sluggish mountaineers, who had passed the day in unwonted excitement, and had earned their night's rest. But the penalties of refusing to aid the officers of the law spurred them on.
Even old Hoodendin—not so old as to be exempt from this duty, for the sheriff had summoned every available man at the Settlement to his assistance—hobbled from stone to stone, from one rotting log to another, where he sat down to recuperate from his exertions.
The search degenerated into a mere form, an aimless beating about in the brush, before Micajah Green could be induced to relinquish the hope of capture, and blow the horn as a signal for reassembling.
The bands of fagged-out men, straggling back to the Settlement toward dawn, found reciprocal satisfaction in expressing the opinion that 'Cajah Green had 'keerlessly let Rick git away, an' warn't a-goin' ter mend the matter by incitin' the mounting ter bust 'round the woods like a lot o' crazy deer all night, ter find a man ez warn't nowhar.'
They wore surly enough faces as they gathered about the door of the store, or lounged on the stumps and the few chairs, waiting for a mounted party that had been ordered to extend the search down in the adjacent coves and along the spurs.
The agile Jer'miah scudded about, furnishing such consolation as can be contained in a jug. Had the quest resulted differently, they would have laughed and joked and caroused till daybreak. As it was, their talk was fragmentary; slight and innuendo were in every word.
The sheriff had supplemented his own negligence by a grievous disregard of their comfort, and the sense of defeat, so bitter to an American citizen, completed the æsthetic misery of the situation.
The waggons still stood about in the clearing; here and there the burly dark steers lay ruminant and half asleep among the stumps. Among them, too, were the cattle of the place; the cows, milked late the evening before, had not yet roamed away.
Against a dark background of blackberry bushes a white bull stood in the moonlight, motionless, the lustre gilding his horns and touching his great sullen eyes with a spark of amber light. In his imperious stillness he looked like a statue of a masquerading Jupiter.