“I’ll tell ’em––I’ll tell ’em. Come on, I ken walk. But it’s only for Jim, an’––an’ I don’t want that gold.” And for the first time in her life Eve saw the boy’s eyes flood with tears, which promptly streamed down his ghastly cheeks.
Peter’s eyes glowed. There was just time, he believed. But he was thinking of the boy. At last––at last. It was for Jim Elia was doing it. For Jim, and not for the gold. He had delved and delved until at last he had struck the real color, where the soil had long been given up as barren.
“Come, laddie.” He stepped up to the boy with a great kindness, and, stretching out his herculean arms, he lifted him bodily from the bed. “You can’t walk, you’re too ill. I’ll jest carry you.”
And he bore him out of the house.
CHAPTER XXXV
IN THE SHADOW OF THE GALLOWS TREE
The creak of a saddle; the shuffling and rustle of horses moving at a walk through the long prairie grass; the sudden jolt of a wheel as it dropped from a tufty wad to the barren sand intersecting the clumps of grass of which the prairie is largely made up; the half-hearted neigh of a horse, as though it were striving to break from under the spell of gloomy depression which seemed to weigh heavily upon the very atmosphere; these were the only sounds which broke the gray stillness of dawn.
No one seemed to have words to offer. No one seemed to have sufficient lightness even to smoke a morning pipe. There were few amongst those riding out from Barnriff who would not far sooner have remained in their beds, amidst the easy dreams of healthy, tired nature, now that the last moments of a man’s life were at hand. There were few, now that the heat and excitement of accusation were past, but would far rather have had the easy thought that they had been on the other side of the ballot. But this was mere human sentimentality at the thought of the passing of one man’s life. This thing was necessary, necessary for example and precept. A man had slain another. He was guilty; he must die. The argument was as old as the world.