“Look here, Jack, I’m going for Peter M’Laughlan——”
“Go to hell!” said Jack.
I put the other horses back in the yard, the saddles in the skillion, got on my horse and rode off. Thomas and the others asked me no questions, they took no notice. In a place like that a man could almost do anything, short of hanging himself, without anyone interfering or being surprised. And probably, if he did hang himself, they’d let him swing for a while to get a taste of it.
Comesomehow was about fifteen miles back on a track off the main road. I reckoned that I could find Peter and bring him on by the afternoon, and I rode hard, sick as I was. I was too sick to smoke.
As it happened, Peter had started early from his last camp and I caught him just as he was turning off into Comesomehow track.
“What’s up, Joe?” he asked as I rode up to him—but he could see.
“Jack Barnes is on the booze at Thomas’s,” I said.
Peter just looked right through me. Then he turned his horse’s head without a word, and rode back with me. And, after a while, he said, as if to himself:
“Poor Clara! Poor little lassie!”
By the time we reached the shanty it was well on in the afternoon. A fight was stopped in the first round and voices lowered when the chaps caught sight of us. As Peter walked into the bar one or two drunks straightened themselves and took off their hats with drunken sentiment.