"They've got
him," he said in a choked tone, and waved a hand toward the west.
"Who's got him?" Dade clanked a step closer and peered sharply into
Bill's face, with all the easy good humor wiped out of his own.
"The Committee. You're too late; they're taking him out to the oak.
Been gone about ten minutes. They had it in for him, and--I couldn't
do a thing! The men in this town--" Epithets rushed incoherently from
Bill's lips, just as violent weeping marks the reaction from a woman's
first silence in the face of tragedy.
Dade did not hear a word he was saying, after those first jerky
sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was
making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of
the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town
which could permit such outrages.
"Watch Surry a minute!" he said abruptly, and hurried into the
gambling hall. In a minute he was back again and lifting foot to the
stirrup.
"How long did you say they've been gone?" he asked, without looking at
Bill.
"Ten or fifteen minutes. Say, you can't do anything!"
Dade was already half-way up the block, a swirl of sand-dust marking
his flight. Bill stared after him distressfully.
"He'll go and get his light put out--and he won't help Jack a damn
bit," he told himself miserably, and went in. Life that day looked
very hard to big-hearted Bill Wilson, and scarcely worth the trouble
of living it.
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