Twenty rods farther on they struck the hay, spread thickly for the trig—the checking of the runners. And the sled-runners, biting it, jerked and halted, the bind-chains creaked, the chafing logs groaned—and they were stopped! The lathering horses stood with legs wide spraddled, their heads lowered, their snorting noses puffing up the snow.
Tommy Eye dug the tobacco from his cheek and thoughtfully tossed it away. Britt’s team had disappeared, reins dragging, the horses running madly, the whitened, puffy face flashing one last look as it winked out of sight among the trees.
“I’ve dreamed of such a thing as this,” observed Tommy, at last, a strange tremor in his tones. “I’ve dreamed of chasin’ old P’laski Britt, me settin’ on five thousand feet of wild timber and lookin’ down into his face and seein’ him a-wonderin’ whether they’d let him into the front door of hell or make him go around to the back. It’s the first time he was ever run good and plenty, and I done it—but,” he sighed, “it was damnation whilst it lasted!”
He turned now and gazed long and wistfully at Wade.
“Ye stuck by me, didn’t ye, Mr. Wade?” he said, softly. “Stuck by me jest like I was a friend, and not old, drunken Tommy Eye! I reckon we’ll shake on that!” And when they clasped hands he asked, with the wistful, inexpressible pathos of his simple devotion to duty: “What was it all about? I jest only know they sluiced me!”
And Wade gasped an explanation, Tommy Eye staring at him with wrinkling brows and squinting eyes.
“Come to arrest me for northin’ I hadn’t done?” he shrilled. “Come to take me off’n a job where I was needed, and where I was earnin’ my honest livin’?”
“They had the warrant, and Britt swore out the lying complaint.”
“Mr. Wade,” said Tommy, after a solemn pause, “I’ve done a lot of things in this life to be ashamed of—but jest gittin’ drunk, that’s all. I ain’t never done a crime. But jest now, if it hadn’t been for that toss-up between supper in camp or hot broth in tophet to-night, I’d be travellin’ down-country, pulled away from you when you need me worst, and all on account of P’laski Britt. If that’s the chances an honest man runs in this world, I’m an outlaw from now on!”