Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Western stories
“Keep away!” cried Jake. But Andy had leaped insanely in front of the
door, and fell dead with a bullet through him. With a terrible scream,
Jake flung himself at the place, and poured six shots through the panel;
then, as Clallam caught him, wrenched at the lock, and they saw inside.
Whiskey and blood dripped together, and no one was moving there. It
was liquor with some, and death with others, and all of it lay upon the
guilty soul of Jake.
“You deserve killing yourself,” said Clallam.
“That's been attended to,” replied Jake, and he reeled, for during his
fire some Indian had shot once more.
Clallam supported him to the room where his wife and Nancy had passed
the night, and laid him on the bed. “I'll get Mrs. Clallam,” said he.
“If she'll be willin' to see me,” said the wounded man, humbly.
She came, dazed beyond feeling any horror, or even any joy, and she did
what she could.
“It was seein' 'em hit Andy,” said Jake. “Is Andy gone? Yes, I kin tell
he's gone from your face.” He shut his eyes, and lay still so long a
time that they thought he might be dying now; but he moved at length,
and looked slowly round the wall till he saw the print of the village
among the elms and the covered bridge. His hand lifted to show them
this. “That's the road,” said he. “Andy and me used to go fishin'
acrosst that bridge. Did you ever see the Housatonic River? I've fished
a lot there. Cornwall, Connecticut. The hills are pretty there. Then
Andy got worse. You look in that drawer.” John remembered, and when he
got out the tintype, Jake stretched for it eagerly. “His mother and him,
age ten,” he explained to Elizabeth, and held it for her to see, then
studied the faces in silence. “You kin tell it's Andy, can't yu'?” She
told him yes. “That was before we knowed he weren't--weren't goin' to
grow up like the other boys he played with. So after a while, when she
was gone, I got ashamed seein' Andy's friends makin' their way when
he couldn't seem to, and so I took him away where nobody hed ever been
acquainted with us. I was layin' money by to get him the best doctor in
Europe. I 'ain't been a good man.”
A faintness mastered him, and Elizabeth would have put the picture
on the table, but his hand closed round it. They let him lie so, and
Elizabeth sat there, while John, with Mart, kept Nancy away till the
horror in the outer room was made invisible. They came and went quietly,
and Jake seemed in a deepening torpor, once only rousing suddenly to
call his son's name, and then, upon looking from one to the other, he
recollected, and his eyes closed again. His mind wandered, but very
little, for torpor seemed to be overcoming him. The squaw had stolen in,
and sat cowering and useless. Towards sundown John's heart sickened at
the sound of more horsemen; but it was only two white men, a sheriff and
his deputy.
“Go easy,” said John. “He's not going to resist.”
“What's up here, anyway? Who are you?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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