Moodily the other nodded. That was a matter he preferred to leave buried.
“Waal, Cappeze is claimin’ now thet ther possy didn’t make no master effort ter lay hands on Sam. He aims ter hev all ye boys tell ther grand jury what ye knows erbout ther matter.”
The deputy turned away, but in afterthought he 85 paused, thrashing idly with his switch at the weed stalks, as he retailed an almost forgotten item of news.
“A furriner come ter town yistidday, an’ sot out straightway acrost Hemlock Mountain fer old Cappeze’s dwellin’ house.”
“What manner of man war he, Joe?” Sim’s interest was perfunctory. Had he been haled into the grand-jury room in those earlier days, the prospect would have bristled with apprehensions, but now he had behind him the background of respectability and Mose Biggerstaff, who alone knew of his craven behavior as a member of the posse, was dead. Sim felt secure in his mantle of virtue.
“He war a right upstandin’ sort of feller—ther furriner,” enlightened the deputy. “He goes under ther name of Spurrier—John Spurrier.”
As though an electric wire of high tension had broken and brushed him in falling, Sim Colby’s attitude stiffened and every muscle grew taut from neck to ankles as his jaw sagged.
The deputy, with his foot already in the stirrup, missed the terror spasms of the face gone suddenly putty gray. He missed the gasp that contracted the throat and caused its breath to wheeze, and when he glanced back again from his saddle, the other had, with an effort of sheer desperation, regained his outward semblance of composure. He still leaned indolently against the door frame, but now he needed its support, because all his nerves jumped and a confusion like the swarming of angry bees filled his brain.
Afterward he groped his way inside and dropped down into a low chair by the hearth. For a long time 86 he sat there breathing stertorously while the untended fire died away to ashen dreariness. The sun went down beyond the pine tops and still he sat dully with his hands hanging over his knees, their fingers twitching in panic aimlessness.
Out of a past that he had cut away from the present had arisen a ghost of hideous menace. Here into the laurel which had promised sanctuary his Nemesis had pursued him.