"Of course the jury found extenuating circumstances. Legal chicanery, set in motion by money, saved his worthless neck—a neck that could I have once grasped I would have wrung with as little compunction as that of a chicken. I think I could have borne that horror; but, engrossed as I was by it, it was some weeks before I knew that Edith had disappeared.
"At this time I believed she had made away with herself. I never doubted it until the other night. Of all those who knew her, there are few that did not believe the same. Heaven knows that I was loth to believe it. I hunted high and low for her, since I never doubted her honor, though I had never received any assurance of her love for me. Her own brother was left in the dark as to what had become of her. He found an envelope addressed to him, containing a sum of money she had saved for a rainy day, and the simple words, written in pencil, 'Good-by.'
"My own business, suffering for a time from utter neglect, was disposed of; my heart was chilled toward my broken-hearted mother—God help me, she may be dead to-night—and I spent my time seeking for traces of Edith, and waiting to meet Endicott.
"While I was off on what I thought a slight trace, for I had not fully allowed myself to believe that she was dead, he emerged from a prison, and escaped me. I followed him East; he eluded me. I heard of him South; but he was gone when I reached New Orleans. Then I gave way and was sick for a long season. When I came to myself something prompted me to turn Westward. Strange how Fate, or some occult law of attraction, drew me here. Yet many months of wandering, through hardships and perils, brought me no surcease, and the tension on my nerves has been gradually tightening ever since I found myself west of the Mississippi. The rest you know. What may happen, neither you, nor I, nor any other living mortal may say."
Winkle told his story in a slow, quiet, yet intense way. Blaze listened to it with evident interest.
"A condemned hard case he was. I've knowed men shot fur less than them. That's the cuss o' civilization. If yer goin' to draw a bead upon this man ye'd better do it here than furder East. Bein' that you've found the girl alive, mebbe you'll weaken on that. A human critter's a curi's consarn that only goes under onc't. In course red-skins I don't take much account on; but, when it comes to drawin' it fine on a white, an' he not lookin' for it—'pears to me it 'u'd glimmer the fire-sight."
"I think at two hundred yards he would be a dead man?"
Winkle said this slowly and half inquiringly, as though a doubt had arisen in his mind; and then he continued, in a tone in curious contrast to the one he generally used in speaking of Endicott:
"You know I've followed after him so long and was so certain of it. It would be hard to let him go after all."
"Two hundred yard is some distance, an' a man's a mark o' moderate bigness. I've seen a deer missed at fifty. Buck ag'er an' fancy shootin' don't agree good. If you'll just keep cool an' not rush the funeral mebbe ye'll eventooally git straight enough to not care a cuss if school keeps er not. I've done ye more ner a hundred dollars' worth of good a'ready."