"When he hollers, yo' cry back at him yo' have found his OLD DEAD HOSS in the road. It won't hurt to holler that loud, and that will make him let you within talking distance.""His old DEAD HOSS?"
"Yo' don't need to know what that is. HE will." And then Bud told me enough of the signs and words to say, and things to do, to keep Beaure-gard from shooting--he said he reckoned he had trusted me so much he might as well go the hull hog. Beauregard, he says, belongs to them riders too; they have friends in all the towns that watches the lay of the land fur them, he says.
I made a long half-circle around them burning buildings, keeping in the dark, fur people was coming out in bunches, now that it was all over with, watching them fires burning, and talking excited, and saying the riders should be follered--only not follering.
I found the house Bud meant, and they was a light in the second-story window. I rattled on the gate. A dog barked somewheres near, but I hearn his chain jangle and knowed he was fast, and Irattled on the gate agin.
The light moved away from the window. Then another front window opened quiet, and a voice says:
"Doctor, is that yo' back agin?"
"No," I says, "I ain't a doctor."
"Stay where you are, then. _I_ GOT YOU COVERED.""I am staying," I says, "don't shoot."
"Who are yo'?"
"A feller," I says, kind of sensing his gun through the darkness as I spoke, "who has found your OLD DEAD HOSS in the road."He didn't answer fur several minutes. Then he says, using the words DEAD HOSS as Bud had said he would.
"A DEAD HOSS is fitten fo' nothing but to skin.""Well," I says, using the words fur the third time, as instructed, "it is a DEAD HOSS all right."I hearn the window shut and purty soon the front door opened.
"Come up here," he says. I come.
"Who rode that hoss yo' been talking about?" he asts.
"One of the SILENT BRIGADE," I tells him, as Bud had told me to say. I give him the grip Bud had showed me with his good hand.
"Come on in," he says.
He shut the door behind us and lighted a lamp agin. And we looked each other over. He was a scrawny little feller, with little gray eyes set near together, and some sandy-complected whiskers on his chin. I told him about Bud, and what his fix was.
"Damn it--oh, damn it all," he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "I don't see how on AIRTH I kin do it. My wife's jest had a baby. Do yo' hear that?"And I did hear a sound like kittens mewing, somewheres up stairs. Beauregard, he grinned and rubbed his nose some more, and looked at me like he thought that mewing noise was the smartest sound that ever was made.
"Boy," he says, grinning, "bo'n five hours ago.
I've done named him Burley--after the tobaccer association, yo' know. Yes, SIR, Burley Peoples is his name--and he shore kin squall, the derned little cuss!""Yes," I says, "you better stay with Burley.
Lend me a rig of some sort and I'll take Bud home."So we went out to Beauregard's stable with a lantern and hitched up one of his hosses to a light road wagon. He went into the house and come back agin with a mattress fur Bud to lie on, and a part of a bottle of whiskey. And I drove back to that lumber pile. I guess I nearly killed Bud getting him into there. But he wasn't bleeding much from his hip--it was his arm was giving him fits.
We went slow, and the dawn broke with us four miles out of town. It was broad daylight, and early morning noises stirring everywheres, when we drove up in front of an old farmhouse, with big brick chimbleys built on the outside of it, a couple of miles farther on.
