Chirk gave a long whistle. “So-ho! To be sure, you been smelling of April and May ever since I met you, but I never suspicioned you was married!”
“Two nights ago, in the Squire’s presence. He was dying, and I gave him my word that I would keep his name clean.”
Another silence fell. “If we are going to move Coate’s body,” suddenly said Stogumber, with some violence, “why don’t we do it, ’stead of standing gabbing? As for you, rank-rider, you light the way, and bring the gun along, which he dropped! And if I have any more sauce from you, you’ll be sorry!”
Twenty minutes later, they came out of the cavern, and stood for a few minutes, dazzled by the sunlight. Chirk, blowing on his numbed fingers, said caustically: “There’s coves as pays down their dust to go into places like that! It ain’t going to break my heart if I never see another!”
“Nor mine,” agreed Stogumber. “Fair blue-devilled, I was, and I don’t mind owning it. We better close it up again, till I come back, with my patrol.”
This done, the Captain left the Runner to tie the fence to the staples again, and went with Chirk to fetch Mollie and the landlord’s cob from where they had been tethered round the spur of the hill. As soon as he was out of earshot of Stogumber, the Captain said sternly: “Chirk, how dared you do that?”
Chirk did not pretend to misunderstand him. He merely said: “You’d have had your toes cocked up now if I hadn’t, Soldier.”
“Humdudgeon! I daresay he would have been glad enough to have shot me, could he but have summoned up the resolution, but whether he could have kept his hand steady is another matter! Good God, he was as scared as a rabbit! You had only to shout to him to drop his pistol, and he would have done it—and himself with it, in a swoon of terror! You knew that!”
“If you don’t beat the Dutch!” remarked Chirk. “I didn’t see you with your fambles round Coate’s squeeze, did I? I didn’t hear the crack of his neck breaking, did I? Oh, no! out of course I didn’t!”
“Yes, I killed Coate, and without compunction!” the Captain said. “There were three wretched fellows who owed their deaths to him, and an old man whose last days on earth were made hideous by his plots! But Stornaway was no more than a tool in his hands, and that you knew!”