"And now you want to kill both of 'em by committing suicide. You ought to think a little of your mother——"
"Shut your mouth," said Morton, turning fiercely on Burchard; for he suddenly saw a vision of the agony his mother must suffer.
"Oh! don't get mad. I'm going to let you have back your horse and gun, only you must give me a bill of sale so that I may be sure you won't gamble them away to somebody else. You must redeem them on your honor in six months, with a hundred and twenty-five dollars. I'll do that much for the sake of my old friend, Lew Goodwin, who stood by me in many a tight place, and was a good-hearted fellow after all."
Morton accepted this little respite, and Burchard left the tavern. As it was now past midnight, Goodwin did not go to bed. At two o'clock he gave Dolly corn, and before daylight he rode out of the village. But not toward home. His gambling and losses would be speedily reported at home and to Captain Lumsden. And moreover, Kike would persecute him worse than ever. He rode out of town in the direction opposite to that he would have taken in returning to Hissawachee, and he only knew that it was opposite. He was trying what so many other men have tried in vain to do—to run away from himself.
But not the fleetest Arabian charger, nor the swiftest lightning express, ever yet enabled a man to leave a disagreeable self behind. The wise man knows better, and turns round and faces it.
About noon Morton, who had followed an obscure and circuitous trail of which he knew nothing, drew near to a low log-house with deer's horns over the door, a sign that the cabin was devoted to hotel purposes—a place where a stranger might get a little food, a place to rest on the floor, and plenty of whiskey. There were a dozen horses hitched to trees about it, and Goodwin got down and went in from a spirit of idle curiosity. Certainly the place was not attractive. The landlord had a cut-throat way of looking closely at a guest from under his eye-brows; the guests all wore black beards, and Morton soon found reason to suspect that these beards were not indigenous. He was himself the object of much disagreeable scrutiny, but he could hardly restrain a mischievous smile at thought of the disappointment to which any highwayman was doomed who should attempt to rob him in his present penniless condition. The very worst that could happen would be the loss of Dolly and his rifle. It soon occurred to him that this lonely place was none other than "Brewer's Hole," one of the favorite resorts of Micajah Harp's noted band of desperadoes, a place into which few honest men ever ventured.
One of the men presently stepped to the window, rested his foot upon the low sill, and taking up a piece of chalk, drew a line from the toe to the top of his boot.* Several others imitated him; and Morton, in a spirit of reckless mischief and adventure, took the chalk and marked his right boot in the same way.
* In relating this incident, I give the local tradition as it is yet told in the neighborhood. It does not seem that chalking one's boot is a very prudent mode of recognizing the members of a secret band, but I do not suppose that men who follow a highwayman's life are very wise people.
"Will you drink?" said the man who had first chalked his boot.
Goodwin accepted the invitation, and as they stood near together, Morton could plainly discover the falseness of his companion's beard. Presently the man fixed his eyes on Goodwin and asked, in an indifferent tone: "Cut or carry?"