“I’m an outlaw!” repeated the man. “I ain’t to work for nobody. I’ve jacked my job here. I’m just plain outlaw. I ain’t responsible to nobody. Nobody ain’t responsible for me. You tell that to everybody concerned. I’m an outlaw!”
Rodliff, still with wondering eyes on Tommy, slowly worked a revolver out of his hip-pocket.
“Come down off’n that pile!” he shouted. “I want you!”
But once the revolver was out the target was not visible. Three leaps, his calk boots biting the logs, put Tommy out of sight behind the pile. Two minutes later they heard him among the trees far up the slope of Blunder valley. He was still shouting his declaration of outlawry, and the diminuendo of tone indicated that he was running like a deer.
The high sheriff shoved back his revolver, scowling up at the grinning faces on the log-piles. But he found no hint of similar amiability in Wade’s expression when he turned to face the young man; and after surveying him up and down with much disfavor, he shook his fist in a gesture that embraced them all, and started away, flinging over his shoulder the contemptuous remark that he seemed to have “lighted in a pretty tough gang.” The significance of that expressed conviction was not lost on the young man. It revealed what machination was doing. Britt, bulwarked by the courts and public sentiment, was not to be fought by the outlawry he had invoked as the code of combat.
An hour later Dwight Wade was urging his horse towards Castonia. If Rodburd Ide or a message from Rodburd Ide were on the way north he would meet the situation so much the sooner. The sting of his bitter thoughts and the goad of his impatience would not allow him to stay at Enchanted. He wanted to know the exact facts “outside.” He did not dare to jeopardize his partner by the rashness his bitter anger once contemplated.
A half-mile down the tote road Tommy Eye dashed at him from the covert of the spruces.
“I reckoned you’d be goin’, Mr. Wade!” he panted. “I ain’t intendin’ to bother you—but what did Ben Rodliff say that was—that paper that he clubbed you with?”
The pitiful intensity of his loyal anxiety struck Wade to the heart. “It was an injunction, Tommy,” he explained, patiently. “It’s an order from the court. Oh, it’s horribly unjust! It may be law, but it isn’t justice; for justice would take into account a man’s common rights, and wouldn’t tie them up by pettifogging delays.” He was talking as much to himself as to the poor fellow who clung to the thill. The words surged into his mouth out of his full soul. “I have been square with men, Tommy, square and decent. I believe in law, and I want to respect it. But when law obeys Pulaski Britt’s bidding, and takes you by the throat and kneels on you and chokes you, and lets such a man as Britt walk past on his own business, free and clear, it’s law that’s devil-made.”
But the incantation of that law was having its effect on a nature that was more docile than it realized. In his hot anger he had said he would fight Britt with the tyrant’s own lawless choice of weapons. He looked back and remembered that he had intended to do so. A sheriff with a gold badge and a bit of paper had prevailed over his bitter resolution when Pulaski Britt and his army at his back would have failed to cow him.