"But its opportunities to extend—they will be stopped!" she cried. "Yours will be stopped!" The horses were in the circle now, and she implored even more frantically: "Run for it—run!"
"No! The biggest men in those covers," he pointed again to the shelves, "wouldn't be there today if they'd run! Jesus would be a by-word, and the world couldn't raise its head to a single hero." The horses had stopped, and a man was dismounting. "Good-bye," the big mountaineer said quietly.
He put out his hand, but she did not see it. She had slipped into a chair and was burying her sobbing face in her arms. Steps sounded on the porch, and a bell far back in the house jingled. He looked at her another long, breathless moment, then turned and walked out through the French window.
"Good mawnin', sheriff," her tortured brain heard him say.
Old Jess Mason eyed him over high cheek bones and hawk-like nose for the fraction of a second before taking his hand from beneath his coat. Then it came slowly out, empty.
"Good mawnin', yohse'f!" The sheriff was fairly bristling with anger. "Look-ee-heah," he savagely demanded, "what's this funny business about, anyhow? Do you-all reckon you're goin' to poke fun at me an' the law, an' git away with it? Or what?"
"I don't reckon there's been such an awful lot of fun poked around heah, Jess," Dale sullenly answered.
"You don't! Well, there'd better not be, that's all I got to say!" He wiped his forehead and glared. "Then s'pose you explain somethin'! I'm ridin' through town a while back, when the telephone gal sticks her head outen the winder an' squeals: 'Git to the Cunnel's a-flyin', Jess—they say Dale Dawson's done kilt Tusk Potter!'"
"That's all right," Dale said.
"Keep yoh 'pinions to yohse'f till I ask for 'em! I put my hawse's belly to the ground an' we've gone 'bout two mile, when young McElroy comes chargin' up behind a-yellin' for me to stop." 'What's the matter?' I asks, pullin' 'round an' facin' 'im. 'You've got a blame good hawse, Jess,' he grins, 'I thought I couldn't ketch you!!' Then he comes up clost an' says: "That message come wrong!' 'How d'you know?' I asks. 'I heerd it,' he says, 'an' Dale ain't never kilt Tusk!' 'Then who did?' I asks agin. 'Me,' he says."