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"You want to tell me somethin' over there? Why not tell me here?" "'Cause 'cause Mr. Bacheldor thinks David did it and he'll kill him. He said he would. I want HIM to know David wasn't the one. And if, if you're there when he knows, he'll know YOU know he knows and he won't dast shoot at David any more. Please come, Cap'n Gould. Please, right away." Shadrach tugged at his beard.
Her eyes wandered about the faces in the room, until their gaze rested upon the face of Jimmie Bacheldor. And Jimmie looked white and scared. "N-no, sir, I I guess not," she faltered. "I guess not, too," declared Con, with a sarcastic laugh. But the Captain was suspicious. He had seen the child's look. "Hold on," he commanded. "There's more to this than a blind man could see through a board fence.
So supper was postponed, in spite of Isaiah's grumblings, and the Captain and Mary-'Gusta started forthwith for the home of their nearest neighbor. Mr. Chase, his curiosity aroused, would have asked a dozen questions, but Mary-'Gusta would neither answer nor permit Shadrach to do so. The Bacheldor family were at supper when the callers arrived.
Even Nony Piddock seemed to sort of onbend a little, and moisten up with the dew of charity his arid desert of idees a little mite, when he wuz around. And occasionally, when the bacheldor, whose name wuz Mr. Freeman, when he would, half in fun and half in earnest, answer Nony's weary and bitter remarks, once in a while even that aged youth would seem to be ashamed of himself, and his own idees.
The tear stains on her cheeks and the dampness of the pillow showed how she had spent the time since leaving the dining-room. Shadrach put the lamp upon the washstand, pulled a chair beside the bed and sat down. He took her hand in his. "Mary-'Gusta," he said, gently, "you knew 'twas my gun that Ab Bacheldor was tryin' to shoot David with?" Mary-'Gusta moved her head up and down on the pillow.
"He waded in with an ax and stayed there till I thought he'd burn the hair off his head. Web ought to pay you and him salvage, Eri. The whole craft would have gone up if it hadn't been for you two." "I wonder if they got that pool table out," laughed Ralph. "They did everything but saw it into chunks." "I never saw Bluey Bacheldor work so afore," commented the Captain.
Mary-'Gusta's forehead puckered. "I was playin' with Jimmie Bacheldor yesterday," she said, "and he made me think." Abner Bacheldor was the nearest neighbor. His ramshackle dwelling was an eighth of a mile from the Gould-Hamilton place. Abner had the reputation of being the meanest man in town; also he had a large family, of which Jimmie, eight years old, was the youngest.
Mary-'Gusta protested, but young Bacheldor called her a coward and declared he wouldn't play with cowards and 'fraid-cats, so rather than be one of those detestable creatures she usually swallowed her scruples and followed the tempter. It was a risk, of course, but a real adventure; and, like many adventurers, the pair came to grief.
Wonders won't never cease it's true, but I'd as soon a' thought o' my old 'ooman dancin' a 'ornpipe among her cream cheeses as that Passon Walden would a' let Miss Vancourt inside this 'ere gate so easy like, an' he a bacheldor.
To borrer a man's own gun yes, and cartridges, too to kill that man's own cat with! Of all the solid brass! He never told me 'twas our cat. All he wanted to know was could he borrer your gun and somethin' to load it with. If I'd known " His employer interrupted him. "WHAT?" he roared. "Do you mean to say that Ab Bacheldor came here and borrowed MY gun to to do what he done with?"
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