She yelled this at him as she stood before him like a fury. The words went by him like a breeze: they entered his ears but not his brain: he was still stupefied, half unconscious. He turned away and was violently sick. She pitied him not and was remorseless. She took him by the shoulder and shook him. He turned a foolish and wondering face at her, with some dawn, a very dim dawn, of consciousness in him.
"I'll get you hanged," she said. He heard the word "hanged" and again "hanged" and wondered sickly what it meant. She ran from him and he watched her. She went to the horse which stood some twenty yards away. The animal started and walked away and she stopped and spoke soothingly to it, using low words and bidding it be gentle. She went round in a circle and got upon the other side of it, and at last the horse stood still and let her grasp the bridle. Pete wondered what horse it was and why she was catching it. She brought it to the shack and slipped the bridle reins over a post.
He saw her use incredible strength and drag Ned Quin into the house. She cried aloud and sobbed most dreadfully. She put her man in the shadow, laid his head upon a pillow and covered his wounded face with white, even as her own was covered. She shut the door and came out. Pete still sat upon the ground with both hands outspread behind him. She said that he would be hanged, again she said it. He saw her get upon his horse and ride away towards the road. Where was she going? Who was it that was going? What was this woman going for?
These were horrible problems, but he knew, as a man knows things in a nightmare, when he cannot move, that their solution concerned him. They concerned him seriously. He struggled to solve them. It seemed that he spent years, aye, centuries, in the bitter attempt and still he saw the woman astraddle on a horse go up the rise to the north. This was a woman, oh, God, what woman?—a woman with a white cloth on her face, a ridiculous fierce figure who had said "hanged!" What was "hanged"? What did it mean? And why did she say it to him? What was he for that matter, and who was he? He struggled hard to discover that. So far as he could see, he was an unnamed, peculiarly solitary speck of aching, struggling matter in a world of pain. So they say the disembodied may feel. His senses were numbed: they sent foolish messages to him, messages that warned him and alarmed him without being intelligible. He knew that he was in some great danger. He saw a house, but did not know it; a gun, but could not say what it was and why it lay there in the pounded, trodden dust. Something wet dripped from his head: he put his hand up and saw blood upon it. Whoever he was, he was hurt in some way. He sighed and still saw the woman. Now she disappeared. It mattered very much. Why was she leaving him? He spoke suddenly.
"What's my name?" said Pete.
If he could only get that. On that point hung everything: he felt sure of that. Now he knew he was a man; he had got so far. But what manner of man he could not tell. How silly everything was! He groaned and grinned. Then he started.
"My name's Pete," he said suddenly. "It's Pete!"
This was the clue: this the end of the tangled cord of things. It was, he felt, utterly idiotic and alarming to know so much and no more. It was infinitely annoying. He said "I'm Pete, am I Pete, I'm Pete, eh!" and then sat staring. He wanted some kind of help, but what help he did not know. The task of discovering what all things were from what seemed the primal fact of all, that he was called Pete, appeared hugely difficult. He cried about it at last. And then some chickens came round the corner of the shack, and pecked in the dust. A big rooster came after them and stood upon a log, and whooped a loud cock-a-doodle-doo! It was a natural sound. Pete knew it and stared with sudden intelligence at the brilliant bird upon the log. Of a sudden the whole veil over all things was lifted. He knew who he was and why he was there and what he had done! Above all he knew what the word "hanged" meant. It was his sister who had said it. He got upon his knees and staggered till he could hold on to the house. It was a help to hold on to something while he thought.
"Hanged," said Pete. He had killed a man. Where was he? It was Ned Quin. But if he had killed him how had he got away?
"I won't be hanged," said Pete. "I won't. She's gone to tell 'em I've made Ned mimaloose, killed him. I'll stop her!"