Ed Hall took the senseless figure of the old man in the road into his
arms and half threw it into the back seat of the car. To Clara it was as
though his rough, misunderstanding hands were on her own body. The
car started swiftly along the road and Ed told again the story of the
night's happenings. “I tell you, Mr. Hunter is in mighty bad shape, he
may die,” he said. Clara turned to look at her husband and thought him
totally unaffected by what had happened. His face was quiet like her
father's face. The factory superintendent's voice went on explaining his
part in the adventures of the evening. Ignoring the pale workman who sat
lost in the shadows in a corner of the rear seat, he spoke as though
he had undertaken and accomplished the capture of the murderer
single-handed. As he afterwards explained to his wife, Ed felt he had
been a fool not to come alone. “I knew I could handle him all right,” he
explained. “I wasn't afraid, but I had figured it all out he was crazy.
That made me feel shaky. When they were getting up a crowd to go out on
the hunt, I says to myself, I'll go alone. I says to myself, I'll bet
he's gone out to that woods on the Riggly farm where he and his wife
used to go on Sundays. I started and then I saw this other man standing
on a corner and I made him come with me. He didn't want to come and
I wish I'd gone alone. I could have handled him and I'd got all the
credit.”
In the car Ed told the story of the night in the streets of Bidwell.
Some one had seen Steve Hunter shot down in the street and had declared
the harness maker had done it and had then run away. A crowd had gone to
the harness shop and had found the body of Jim Gibson. On the floor of
the shop were the factory-made harnesses cut into bits. “He must have
been in there and at work for an hour or two, stayed right in there with
the man he had killed. It's the craziest thing any man ever done.”
The harness maker, lying on the floor of the car where Ed had thrown
him, stirred and sat up. Clara turned to look at him and shivered. His
shirt was torn so that the thin, old neck and shoulders could be plainly
seen in the uncertain light, and his face was covered with blood that
had dried and was now black with dust. Ed Hall went on with the tale of
his triumph. “I found him where I said to myself I would. Yes, sir, I
found him where I said to myself I would.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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