Rowlett rose to his feet and went pale, and Parish advanced holding the paper out to him.
"Ther day hes come, Bas," said Thornton with the solemnity of an executioner, "when I don't need this pledge no longer. I aims ter give hit back ter ye now."
CHAPTER XXXIII
One might have counted ten while the picture held with no other sound than the breathing of two men and the strident clamour of a blue-jay in a hickory sapling.
Rowlett had not been ordered to raise his hands, but he held them ostentatiously still and wide of his body. The revolver in its holster under his armpit might as well have been at home, for even had both started with an equal chance in the legerdemain of drawing and firing, he knew his master, and as it was, he stood covered.
Now, too, he faced an adversary no longer fettered by any pledge of private forbearance.
This, then, was the end—and it arrived just a damnable shade too soon, when with the falling of dusk he might have witnessed the closing scenes of his enemy's doom. To-morrow there would be no Parish Thornton to dread, but also to-morrow there would be no Bas Rowlett to enjoy immunity from fear.
"Hit war jest erbout one y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap hes done come ter pass since then—don't ye want yore envellip, Bas?"