Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly.
CHAPTER XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE
It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven o’clock, and it was only eight o’clock when the Ry left his home. A rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely a warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the position was blind and helpless.
As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the friendliness had had its origin in Jowett’s knowledge of horseflesh. This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse.
It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would not have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a horse as he loved himself.
He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the “Reverend Tripple,” who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers.
For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple’s rawbone with a piratical eye.
Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett’s view, was its master’s fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the patient; and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell his rawbone.
He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making for the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was the Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett’s mount caught his eye. It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby’s house, and they were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a horse-deal of consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung.