"Nasty thing if he hit me here; nobody would know. I might be badly wounded and help never reach me. Rotten that, very!"
Joe shivered. We are describing his feelings and his actions with the utmost truth and fairness, and truth compels us to say that he shivered. He looked about him doubtfully, seeing nothing but leaves and waving branches and underwood, with the figure of a man he knew to be already a murderer breaking a path through the forest quite near at hand, while a rifle was borne prominently before him. Bear in mind, too, that Joe had had a terrifying experience already, that he still bore a wound given by the bully, while his scalp was sore and his brain still dizzy with the collisions he had experienced on the previous evening.
"He'll miss me by fifteen feet," said Joe, measuring the distance with his eye. "If I like to stay quiet he'll be by in a jiffy, and then—then I'll be safe!"
He could have kicked himself for the thought; the blood flew to his cheeks again and shamed him. He clenched his teeth and bobbed his head higher.
"Frightfully tempting to funk the meeting," he told himself wrathfully; "but I'll not be such a coward.
"Hurley!" he shouted.
The man stopped abruptly, his eyes shooting into sudden prominence.
