But while the preacher stood waiting, his lips drew themselves into an unbending line and his shaggy brows lowered. Inwardly he was praying: "Almighty God, I beseeches Ye ter strengthen me in this hour ter fergive mine enemies—fer Thou knowest thar's murder in my heart!"
As the girl threw the door wide, she saw what seemed to be three figures locked in a close embrace.
The trio lurched rather than stepped into the lighted area, and, shrinking back horrified, Blossom saw Brother Fulkerson close his house, his face marked, as she had never before seen it, with a grim unwelcome.
Sanders carried in his arms a figure whose limbs fell in grotesque inertia. Its clothing was torn by briars and bullets; matted with mire and blood. Its face was half hidden by a rough bandage made from Jerry's own handkerchief, upon which the stains had turned from red to dull brown, except at the spots where the crimson had been renewed by an unstaunched trickle.
Bear Cat stumbled across the threshold unaided, but as he halted, blinking at the light, he reeled drunkenly and propped his disheveled body against the wall. That was for a moment only and at its end he drew himself into something nearer uprightness and swept his hand across his brow. He had not carried the matter this far to fail at the finish.
"Lay thet man on a bed," he panted with fierce earnestness. "Thar hain't no time ter waste ... he's nigh death ... an' he's come hyar ter be wedded."
Brother Fulkerson answered in a voice of bewilderment, tinged, too, with protest.
"Thar hain't sca'cely no life in him. Hit's too late fer marryin'."
"Not yit hit hain't ... hit will be ef ye tarries!" Turner ripped out his words with the staccato snap of rifle fire. His own feebleness seemed to drop away like the hat he flung to one side. His eyes burned with tawny fire and a positive fury of haste. For hours, he felt he had been holding death in abeyance by a sheer grapple of resolution, and now men paused to parley and make comment. An impulse of insane wrath besieged him. He must be obeyed—and the moments were flying—the sands running out.
"Hasten now—an' talk afterwards," he burst out.