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Updated: May 25, 2025
What her father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference. Yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes. "I heah talk from Bruce an' Lorenzo," went on her father. "An' Daggs heah " "Daggs nothin'!" interrupted that worthy. "Don't fetch me in. I said nothin' an' I think nothin'."
The musket was fired with a match, which the soldier lit from a cumbrous pocket fire-carrier. Hand firearms were then common enough, and came to us from Italy, shortly after 1540. They were called Daggs. They were wheel-locks, wild in firing, short, heavy, and beautifully wrought. Sometimes they carried more than one barrel, and in some cases they were made revolving.
"I heerd a good many conflictin' stories," he said, earnestly. "The village folks is all skeered an' there's no believin' their gossip. But I got what happened straight from Jake Evarts. The fight come off day before yestiddy. Your father's gang rode down to Isbel's ranch. Daggs was seen to be wantin' some of the Isbel hosses, so Evarts says. An' Guy Isbel an' Jacobs ran out in the pasture.
But now a cheer resounded, and the buccaneers, turning their heads, found themselves face to face with the rush of half a dozen men from the Tiger, while more could be seen swarming over the rail. The knot of pirates broke to meet the attack, but some of them stayed. Daggs and three others, including the huge mulatto mate, closed in on Job, cutting at him savagely.
Ellen watched her father eat and waited for him to speak. It occured to her strangely that he never asked about the sheep or the new-born lambs. She divined with a subtle new woman's intuition that he cared nothing for his sheep. "Ellen, what riled Daggs?" inquired her father, presently. "He shore had fire in his eye."
The rum did go to his head, however. The instinctive effort of will that kept his legs steady and his mouth shut had no root in thought. Behind the veil of those light eyes, the brain of Pharaoh Daggs, drunk, was like a seething pit, one black fuddle of ugliness.
He saw tufts of fair hair fly from Daggs's head. He saw the squirt of red blood. Then quick shots from his comrades rang out. They all hit the swaying body of the rustler. But Jean knew with a terrible thrill that his bullet had killed Daggs before the other three struck. Daggs fell forward, his arms and half his body resting over, the embankment. Then the rustlers dragged him back out of sight.
Presently Jorth burst the silence with a curse, and Daggs followed with one of his sardonic laughs. "Wal, boss, what did I tell you?" he drawled. Jorth strode to Ellen, and, whirling her around with a strong hand, he held her facing him. "Did y'u see Isbel?" "Yes," replied Ellen, just as sharply as her father had asked. "Did y'u talk to him?" "Yes." "What did he want up heah?" "I told y'u.
In the long intervals the boy sat, inconspicuous in a corner of the fore-deck, watching the gayly dressed ruffians of the crew, as they threw dice or quarrelled noisily over their winnings. He was assigned to no watch, but usually went below at the same time as Job Howland, thus keeping out of the way of Daggs, the man with the broken nose.
I think it was about two hours after sunrise when those of us who stayed aboard the sloop saw figures running down the hill. The buccaneers got out boarding-pikes and picked up cutlasses, but in a moment Daggs reached the side, out of breath with his haste. "'There's a ten-gun schooner in the northern cove! he cried. 'They're landing a boat now.
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