The presence and the voice of that evil brother, whom he had so bravely served, seemed to arrest the offices of Death. The boy came slowly to, opened his eyes and saw Jim Woppit there. There was pathos, not reproach, in the dying eyes.
"It 's all up, Jim," said the boy, faintly, "I did the best I could."
All that Jim Woppit could answer was "Willie, Willie, Willie," over and over again.
"This was to have been the last and we were going away to be decent folks," this was what the boy went on to say; "I wish it could have been so, for I have wanted to live ever since—ever since I knew her."
Mary Lackington gave a great moan. She stood a way off, but she heard these words and they revealed much—so very much to her—more, perhaps, than you and I can guess.
He did not speak her name. The boy seemed not to know that she was there. He said no other word, but with Jim Woppit bending over him and wailing that piteous "Willie, Willie, Willie," over and over again, the boy closed his eyes and was dead.
Then they all looked upon Jim Woppit, but no one spoke. If words were to be said, it was Jim Woppit's place to say them, and that dreadful silence seemed to cry: "Speak out, Jim Woppit, for your last hour has come!"
Jim Woppit was no coward. He stood erect before them all and plucked from his breast the star of his office and cast away from him the weapon he had worn. He was magnificent in that last, evil hour!
"Men," said he. "I speak for him an' not for myself. Ez God is my judge, that boy wuz not to blame. I made him do it all—the lyin', the robbery, the murder; he done it because I told him to, an' because havin' begun he tried to save me. Why, he wuz a kid ez innocent ez a leetle toddlin' child. He wanted to go away from here an' be different from wot he wuz, but I kep' at him an' made him do an' do agin wot has brought the end to-day. Las' night he cried when I told him he must do the stage this mornin; seemed like he wuz soft on the girl yonder. It wuz to have been the las' time—I promised him that, an' so—an' so it is. Men, you 'll find the money an' everything else in the cabin—under the floor of the cabin. Make it ez square all round ez you kin."
Then Jim Woppit backed a space away, and, before the rest could realize what he was about, he turned, darted through the narrow thicket, and hurled himself into the gulch, seven hundred feet down.