"'Bout a week after that, one Saturday night, a feller come runnin' up the street from the market, sayin' Dick had walked into his place just as he was closin' up,—he had a stall in the public market under the city hall, where the court is,—and asked him polite as you please for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, and before he could holler Dick was off again with the bread under his arm. Well, of course, nobody didn't believe him, for they knowed Dick warn't darn fool enough to be loafin' 'round a place within twenty foot of the room where Polk sentenced him. Some said the feller was crazy, and some said it was a put-up job to throw Ike and the others off the scent. But the next night Dick, with his gun handy in the hollow of his arm, and his hat cocked over his eye, stepped up to the cook shop in the corner of the market and helped himself to a pie and a chunk o' cheese right under their very eyes, and 'fore they could say 'scat,' he was off ag'in and didn't leave no more tracks than a cat.
"By this time the place was wild. Fellers was gettin' their guns, and Ike Martin was runnin' here and there organizing posses, and most every other man you'd meet had a gun and was swore in as a deputy to git Dick and some of the five hundred dollars' reward. They hung 'round the market, and they patrolled the streets, and they had signs and countersigns, and more tomfoolery than would run a circus. Dick lay low and never let on, and nobody didn't see him for another week, when a farmer comin' in with milk 'bout daylight had the life pretty nigh scared out o' him by Dick stopping him, sayin' he was thirsty, and then liftin' the lid off the tin without so much as 'by your leave,' and takin' his fill of the can. 'Bout a week after that the rope got tangled up in the belfry over the court-house so they couldn't ring for fires, and the janitor went up to fix it, and when he came down his legs was shakin' so he couldn't stand. What do you think he'd found?" And the landlord leaned over and broke out in a laugh, striking the table with the flat of his hand until every plate and tumbler rattled.
I made no answer.
"By gosh, there was Dick sound asleep! He had a bed and blankets and lots o' provisions, and was just as comfortable as a bug in a rug. He'd been there ever since he got out of the mineral hole! Tell you I got to laugh whenever I think of it. Dick laughed 'bout it himself t'other day when he told me what fun he had listenin' to Ike and the deputies plannin' to catch him. There ain't another man around here who'd been smart enough to pick out the belfry. He was right over the room in the court-house where they was, ye see, and he could look down 'tween the cracks and hear every word they said. Rainy nights he'd sneak out, and his mother would come down to the market, and he'd see her outside. They never tracked her, of course, when she come there. He told me she wanted him to go clean away somewheres, but he wouldn't leave her.
"When the janitor got his breath he busted in on Ike and the others sittin' 'round swappin' lies how they'd catch Dick, and Ike reached for his gun and crep' up the ladder with two deputies behind him, and Ike was so scared and so 'fraid he'd lose the money that he fired 'fore Dick got on his feet. The ball broke his leg, and they all jumped in and clubbed him over the head and carried him downstairs for dead in his blankets, and laid him on a butcher's table in the market, and all the folks in the market crowded 'round to look at him, lyin' there with his head hangin' down over the table like a stuck calf's, and his clothes all bloody. Then Ike handcuffed him and started for Stoneburg in a wagon 'fore Dick come to."
"That's why he couldn't walk to-night," I asked, "and why the driver took him over in the stage?"
"Yes, that was it. He'll never get over it. Sometimes he's all right, and then ag'in it hurts him terrible, 'specially when the weather's bad.
"All the time he was up to Stoneburg them last four years—he got a year off for good behavior—he kept makin' little things and sellin' 'em to the visitors. Everybody went to his cell—it was the first place the warders took 'em, and they all bought things from Dick. He had a nice word for everybody, kind and comforting-like. He was the handiest feller you ever see. When he got out he had twenty-nine dollars. He give every cent to his mother. Warden told him when he left he hadn't had no better man in the prison since he had been 'p'inted. And there ain't no better feller now. It's a darned mean shame how Chris Rankin and them fellers is down on him, knowin', too, how it all turned out."
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the landlord. I was conscious of a slight choking in my throat which could hardly be traced to the dryness of the beef. I was conscious, too, of a peculiar affection of the eyes. Two or three lamps seemed to be swimming around the room, and one or more blurred landlords were talking to me with elbows on tables.
"What do you think yourself about that money of the farmer's?" I asked automatically, though I do not think even now that I had the slightest suspicion of his guilt. "Do you believe he stole the three dollars when he handed the wallet back?"