The rumour became rife that Maurice Gerald had told them a tale—a strange weird story—but of its details the world outside remained in itching ignorance.
There was one who knew it—one able to confirm it—Zeb Stump the hunter.
There may have been another; but this other was not in the confidence either of the accused or his counsel.
Zeb himself did not appear in their company.
Only once had he been seen conferring with them.
After that he was gone—both from the guard-house and the settlement, as everybody supposed, about his ordinary business—in search of deer, “baar,” or “gobbler.”
Everybody was in error.
Zeb for the time had forsaken his usual pursuits, or, at all events, the game he was accustomed to chase, capture, and kill. It is true he was out upon a stalking expedition; but instead of birds or beasts, he was after an animal of neither sort; one that could not be classed with creatures either of the earth or the air—a horseman without a head!
Chapter Eighty Four. An Affectionate Nephew.
“Tried to-morrow—to-morrow, thank God!
Not likely that anybody ’ll catch that cursed thing before then—to be hoped, never.
“It is all I’ve got to fear.
I defy them to tell what’s happened without that.
Hang me if I know myself!
Enough only to—.
“Queer, the coming of this Irish pettifogger!
“Queer, too, the fellow from San Antonio!
Wonder who and what’s brought him?
Somebody’s promised him his costs?
“Damn ’em!
I don’t care, not the value of a red cent.
They can make nothing out of it, but that Gerald did the deed.
Everything points that way; and everybody thinks so.
They’re bound to convict him.
“Zeb Stump don’t think it, the suspicious old snake!
He’s nowhere to be found.
Wonder where he has gone?
On a hunt, they say. ’Tain’t likely, such time as this.
What if he be hunting it?
What if he should catch it?
“I’d try again myself, if there was time. There ain’t.
Before to-morrow night it’ll be all over; and afterwards if there should turn up—.
Damn afterwards!
The thing is to make sure now.
Let the future look to itself.
With one man hung for the murder, ’tain’t likely they’d care to accuse another.
Even if something suspicious did turn up! they’d be shy to take hold of it.
It would be like condemning themselves!
“I reckon, I’ve got all right with the Regulators.
Sam Manley himself appears pretty well convinced.
I knocked his doubts upon the head, when I told him what I’d heard that night.
A little more than I did hear; though that was enough to make a man stark, staring mad.
Damn! “It’s no use crying over spilt milk.
She’s met the man, and there’s an end of it.
She’ll never meet him again, and that’s another end of it—except she meet him in heaven.
Well; that will depend upon herself.
“I don’t think anything has happened between them.
She’s not the sort for that, with all her wildness; and it may be what that yellow wench tells me—only gratitude.
No, no, no! It can’t be.
Gratitude don’t get out of its bed in the middle of the night—to keep appointments at the bottom of a garden?