"I want you should break the news to Winkie."
"What news?" I says. "They is not going to disqualify him for falling off a horse, I hopes."
"No," Gus says. "Word has just came that his sister has met with a accident."
I says, "Ditsy," or I tries to, but it sticks in my throat and, some way, I finds I am grabbing hold of Gus and there is guys endeavoring to pull us apart thinking we is having a altercation.
"Leave go," Gus says, shrugging them off—he is a big guy—"I am asking Jacks, peaceful, if he will tell Winkie his sister has met with a fatal accident. He is a friend of Winkie and if your sister is dead, it is better it comes from a friend. That is all I am asking. I, myself, cannot do it."
So I does it.
When we gets there everything is confusion. There is people everywhere and a important-acting guy is asking the maid questions, only this does not do no good as she is setting in a chair having hysterics. And there is other men down on their knees examining the floor and blowing powder on the doorknobs and there is a doctor putting his stuff away in a little black bag.
And there is Ditsy.
It does not look like Ditsy. It does not look human even. It is just a smashed-in, crumpled-up thing what is wearing Ditsy's clothes, and it has blood all over.
It reminds me of the way Tod Beemis looks when he is drug out and laid on a shutter after he is caught in a stall with a crazy stallion. Kind of ... kind of ... trampled-looking. It makes me feel kind of numblike, like maybe I has got a scream in me that has froze solid before it can get out.