Finally the morning, a year or two later, when old Batten, the storekeeper at Bismo, was found murdered by Bob Leadley’s serving woman who had gone over for a can of condensed milk. Her outcry roused the town. The old man had been hammered over the head and pulled out from his own back room, or else he had reached that far before they finished him. Things were spilled. There were sticky tracks on the floor and a winy smell in the gray of morning. A cask of apricot brandy in the place, no one knew how old, was still dripping when Bob Leadley got there. He recalled that Batten had never sold any of this brandy, holding it choice and sending a little flask to any one who was sick. What struck him queerly, too, was old Batten’s thin white hair, not combed back as usual.
Letchie Welton came in and propped the old man up against the counter for a better look. The marshal’s jaw got harder and whiter as he repeated that it was a Mexican job. The town was crowding in. Bob Leadley noted that his boy, Bart, was standing around. ‘Go on back home and get your breakfast, Bart,’ he said.
The whole white settlement was inside or at the store doors by this time. Mort Cotton’s voice seemed to find the strangest hush for this sentence: ‘They needn’t have killed him. Old Batten would have given them all that they took—at least trusted ’em for what they took—’
It sounded so innocent and mournful, but it was like blowing on fire—the effect on the crowd. Every one was thinking something of the same kind, and a sort of hell took hold and united them—the same contagion that makes a mob. The cask had ceased to drip—not yet five in the morning. No one knew how much money Batten had in the place.
‘A Mexican job,’ repeated Letchie Welton, his jaw getting harder and whiter. ‘We’ll just go over to Dobe-town right now and see who’s missing.’
They routed out the shacks across the river. Two Mexicans, Marguerin and Rueda, couldn’t be accounted for; also a boy, called Palto around the diggings, was gone. About this time Bob Leadley noticed that Bart hadn’t done what he was told, but had come over the stream with the rest.
‘I told you to get out of here. Go home and wait till I come.’
Now Bob recollected that Bart and Palto had been thick at times.
No work on the mines that day. The ‘Damask Cheek’ filled early. Ten men chosen by Letchie Welton took the trail after the three Mexicans—a trail that showed clear—three ponies headed toward the Border, six or seven hours’ start.
All were thinking, as they rode, of that old white head; ten men and the marshal, still keyed to that sentence which Mort Cotton had spoken. The thoughts of the posse working together this way made the purpose deadly. Each man grew painfully fond of old Batten, and the other side of the fondness was rising hate for the Mexicans ahead. Every little while some one said: ‘Poor old Batten, he wouldn’t have hurt a toad.’