"One-Eye!" cried Cis. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come! Oh, One-Eye, he tied us to the table all night! And he whipped Johnnie with the rope!"
That lone green eye began to roll—to Cis's face, seeing the truth written there, and the story of her long hours of suffering; to the countenance of the priest, to ask, dumbly, if any living man had ever heard anything more outrageous than this; then, "By the Great Horn Spoon!" he breathed, and again stomped one foot, like an angry steer.
Big Tom's smile widened.
Now, the Westerner crossed to Johnnie, bent, and with gentle fingers held under the boy's chin, studied those welts across the pale cheeks. "Crimini!" he murmured. "Crimini! Crimini!"
"Look at his chest, and his back!" Cis advised.
The cowboy lifted Johnnie forward in the morris chair, and held away the big shirt from breast and shoulders. What he saw brought him upright like a pistol shot, his face suddenly scarlet, his mustache whipping up and down, and that eye of his glowering at the longshoreman ferociously. "Cæsar Augustus, Philobustus, Hennery Clay!" he burst out. "Bla-a-ack a-a-and blu-u-ue!"
"And, oh, listen what else he did!" Cis went on. "The uniform you gave to Johnnie——"
"Yas?"
One-Eye stared. "He put it in the stove?" he repeated, but as if this really was quite beyond belief.