There was one great satisfaction for him that evening,
one reward for the great sacrifice, and it came immediately.
While the old man stood trembling before him, Jud
told his story.
It was a rich feast indeed to see the relief, the
astonishment, the pride come in swift turns upon that
grim old face.
And yet in the end Pop was able to muster a fairly
good imitation of a frown.
“And here you come back with a shirt and a pair
of trousers plumb spoiled by all your gallivantin’,”
he said, “not speakin’ of a perfectly
good chicken killed. Ain’t you never goin’
to get grown up, Jud?”
“He was mine, the chicken I killed,” said
Jud, choking.
It brought a pause upon the talk. The other was
forced to wink both eyes at once and sigh.
“The big speckled feller?” he asked more
gently.
“The Plymouth Rock,” said Jud fiercely.
“He wasn’t no speckled feller! He
was the finest rooster and the gamest—”
“Have it your own way,” said the old man.
“You got your grandma’s tongue when it
comes to arguin’ fine points. Now go and
skin out of them clothes and come back and see that
you’ve got all that—that stuff of’n
your face and hands.”
Jud obeyed, and presently reappeared in a ragged outfit,
his face and hands red from scrubbing.
“I guess maybe it’s all right,”
declared the old man. “Only, they’s
risks in it. Know what’s apt to happen if
they was to find that you’d helped to get a
outlaw off free?”
“What would it be?” asked the boy.
“Oh, nothin’ much. Maybe they’d
try you and maybe they wouldn’t. Anyways,
they’d sure wind up by hangin’ you by the
neck till you was as dead as the speckled rooster.”
“The Plymouth Rock,” insisted Jud hotly.
“All right, I don’t argue none. But
you just done a dangerous thing, Jud. And there’ll
be a consid’able pile of men here in the mornin’,
most like, to ask you how and why.”
He was astonished to hear Jud break into laughter.
“Hush up,” said Pop. “You’ll
be wakin’ him up with all that noise.
Besides, what d’you mean by laughin’ at
the law?” “Why, granddad,” said
Jud, “don’t I know you wouldn’t
never let no posse take me from you?
Don’t I know maybe you’d clean ’em
all up?”
“Pshaw!” said Pop, and flushed with delight.
“You was always a fool kid, Jud. Now you
run along to bed.”
In Hal Dozier there was a belief that the end justified
the means. When Hank Rainer sent word to Tomo
that the outlaw was in his cabin, and, if the posse
would gather, he, Hank, would come out of his cabin
that night and let the posse rush the sleeping man
who remained, Hal Dozier was willing and eager to
take advantage of the opportunity. A man of action
by nature and inclination, Dozier had built a great
repute as a hunter of criminals, and he had been known
to take single-handed chances against the most desperate;
but when it was possible Hal Dozier played a safe
game. Though the people of the mountain desert
considered him invincible, because he had run down
some dozen notorious fighters, Hal himself felt that
this simply increased the chances that the thirteenth
man, by luck or by cunning, would strike him down.
