“No. By Gad, we couldn’t!”
The driver’s words came with a sudden outburst of passion. If half the silent curses he was hurling at the head of the venomous Smallbones at that moment took effect, the man would surely have then and there been blotted out of the history of Barnriff.
Jim had no more to say, and the other had no power to frame the thoughts which filled his mind. 388 And so a silence fell upon them as they approached the woods.
Through the perfect fretwork of the upper branches the eastern light shone cold and pure; in the lower depths the gray gloom had not yet lifted. The dark aisles between the trees offered a gloomy welcome. They suggested just such an ending as was intended for their journey.
The leaders had passed round the southern limits, and were no longer in view. The doctor headed his horses upon their course. Something of the eagle light had gone out of his eyes. He stared just ahead of his horses, but no farther. As they came to the bend, where Barnriff would be shut off from their view, Jim turned in his seat, and who can tell what was in his mind at the moment? He knew it was his last glimpse of the place, which for him had held so many disappointments, so many heartaches. Yet––he wanted to see it.
But his eyes never reached the village. They encountered two objects upon the prairie, and fastened themselves upon them, startled, even horrified. A large man was running, bearing in his arms a strange burden, and behind him, trailing wearily, but still running, was a woman. He could have cried out at the sight, and his cry would have been one of horror. Instead, he turned to his companion.
“No reasonable request is denied a––dying man, Doc,” he said, eagerly. “Drive faster.”
Without a word the other touched his horses with the whip, and they broke from their amble into a brisk trot.
In half a minute they drew up in the shadow of a great overhanging tree.