"Yes," he says, "yo' can tell a friend of mine Bud Davis has happened to an accident, and get him over here quick with his wagon to tote me home."
I was to go down the railroad track past them burning warehouses till I come to the third street, and then turn to my left. "The third house from the track has got an iron picket fence in front of it," says Bud, "and it's the only house in that part of town which has. Beauregard Peoples lives there. He is kin to me."
"Yes," I says, "and Beauregard is jest as likely as not going to take a shot out of the front window at me, fur luck, afore I can tell him what I want. It seems to be a kind of habit in these here parts to-night—I'm getting homesick fur Illinoise. But I'll take a chancet."
"He won't shoot," says Bud, "if yo' go about it right. Beauregard ain't going to be asleep with all this going on in town to-night. Yo' rattle on the iron gate and he'll holler to know what yo' all want."
"If he don't shoot first," I says.
"When he hollers, yo' cry back at him yo' have found his OLD DEAD HOSS in the road. It won't hurt to holler that loud, and that will make him let you within talking distance."
"His old DEAD HOSS?"
"Yo' don't need to know what that is. HE will." And then Bud told me enough of the signs and words to say, and things to do, to keep Beauregard from shooting—he said he reckoned he had trusted me so much he might as well go the hull hog. Beauregard, he says, belongs to them riders too; they have friends in all the towns that watches the lay of the land fur them, he says.
I made a long half-circle around them burning buildings, keeping in the dark, fur people was coming out in bunches, now that it was all over with, watching them fires burning, and talking excited, and saying the riders should be follered—only not follering.
I found the house Bud meant, and they was a light in the second-story window. I rattled on the gate. A dog barked somewheres near, but I hearn his chain jangle and knowed he was fast, and I rattled on the gate agin.