“Keith says you didn't sleep at the den last night,” Dwight said, tentatively. “Did you go out to your father's?”
Garner seemed to hesitate for an instant, then he crossed his dusty legs and began to draw upon and tie more firmly the loose strings of his worn and cracked patent-leather shoes.
“Look here, Carson,” he said, when he had fumblingly tied the last knot, “you are too strong and brave a man to be treated in the wishy-washy way a woman's treated. Besides, you'll have to know the truth sooner or later, anyway, and you may as well be prepared for it.”
“Something gone wrong?” Dwight asked, calmly.
“Worse than I dreamed was possible,” Garner said. “I thought we'd have comparatively smooth sailing, but—well, it's your danged luck! Pole Baker come in this morning about two o'clock. I'd taken a room at the hotel to get away from those chattering boys so I could think. I couldn't sleep, and was trying to get myself straight with a dime novel that wouldn't hold my attention, when Pole came and found me. Carson, that rascal Wiggin is the blackest devil that ever walked the earth in human shape.”
“He's been at work,” said Carson, calmly.
“You'd think so,” said Garner. “Pole says wherever he went, expecting to lay hands on good witnesses who had heard Willis make threats, he found that Wiggin had got there first and put up a tale that closed their mouths like clams.”
“I see,” said Dwight. “He frightened them off.”
“I should think he did. He put them on their guard, telling them, without hinting at any trouble of yours, that if they had a call to court, of any sort whatsoever, to get out of it, as it would only be a trick on our part to implicate them in the lynching business.”
“So we have no witnesses,” said Dwight.