All that afternoon Cal Maggard lay hidden in the thicket overlooking his front door and, as a volunteer co-sentinel, Bas Rowlett lay in a "laurel-hell" watching from the rear, but their vigilante was unrewarded.
That night, though, while Maggard sat alone, smoking his pipe by his hearth, two shadowy figures detached themselves, at separate times and points, from the sooty tangle of the mountain woods some mile and a half away, and met at the rendezvous of a deserted cabin whose roof was half collapsed.
They held the shadows and avoided the moonlight and they moved like silhouettes without visible features. They struck no matches and conferred in low and guarded tones, squatting on their heels and haunches in the abandoned interior.
"He went over ter Harper's house yestiddy evenin', an' he's like ter go right soon ergin'," said one.
"All ye've got ter do air ter keep in tech with me—so any time I needs ye I kin git ye. I hain't plum made up my mind yit."
The other shadowy and hunched figure growled unpleasantly, then bit from a tobacco twist and spat before he answered.
"I hain't got no hankerin' fer no more laywayin's," he objected. "Ef ye resolves that he needs killin', why don't ye do hit yoreself? Hit hain't nothin' ter me."
"I've done told ye why I kain't handily do hit myself. Nobody hain't ergoin'ter suspicion you—an' es fer what's in hit fer ye—ef so be I calls on ye—we've done sottled that."
The other remained churlishly silent for awhile. Palpably he had little stomach for this jackal task and it was equally obvious that he feared refusal even more than acceptance of the stewardship.
"Hit hain't like as if I was seekin' ter fo'ce ye ter do suthin' ye hedn't done afore," the persuasive voice reminded him, and again the snarling response growled out its displeasure.