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Fred and myself lingered behind, and suffered the rest of the party to reach the hut in advance of us; and while we sauntered leisurely along, I confided to him the confession of Gulpin, and asked his opinion regarding the means to be employed to discover the dust.
"I am no surgeon," replied Fred, "but I will, if the poor wretch is willing, attempt to amputate the limb, and it may be the means of saving his life." "Save it for a halter, hey?" asked Gulpin, opening his eyes; and for a moment they were lighted up with a fierce fire, that showed the bitter hatred which the man entertained against his captors.
I was still hopeful, and glanced over the opening to see if I could discover signs of the earth having been recently disturbed. While I was thus occupied, Rover was scratching among the bones which were plentifully strewed around, and a sudden thought occurred to me. I consulted the compass, and was glad to find that my surmises were not contrary to the dying confession of Gulpin.
When we entered the woods in search of the gold buried by Jim Gulpin, we had left two yoke hitched to the cart and a tree, and after our severe ordeal of fire, we had found two oxen burned to death, while two more were missing. Thinking that, they might have wandered to the corral where the remainder of the cattle were confined, Smith galloped across the prairie and was soon out of sight.
As we drew near the hut which had withstood so hot an assault from the gang of Jim Gulpin, we saw that its proprietor was seated before his door, busily engaged in reading a book, in which he appeared deeply interested, for he never raised his eyes until Rover, who recognized him, thrust his cold nose on his hand and demanded a welcome.
The big man, so cool and nonchalant a minute or so before, fanned himself with the pocket-handkerchief, and turned red, and went white, and went red, and turned white half a dozen times, in twice as many beats of his flurried pulse. " Out at last, Saxham, and that's why I've been gulpin' and blunderin' and bogglin' for the last ten minutes. Poof!" Major Bingo exhaled a vast breath of relief.
The ten paces were gravely gone through with, and I found that the grass where they terminated bore no indications of having been disturbed. I shook my head and expressed a decided opinion that no ground had been broken there for a year, at the least calculation. Fred was of my opinion, and began to have serious doubts of the truth of the story of Gulpin.
Gulpin did not stop to discharge the weapon which he held, but swinging it over his head he brought it down upon the skull of the foremost man, with a crash, shivering the gun into a hundred pieces, and knocking the fellow senseless.
"I 'm damned if yer will!" he growled madly. "I 'm in on this deal, law er no law. The whole blame thing is a bluff, an' I 'll not stan' fer it no longer. Yer step back thar, Sam Hayes, er else Gulpin County will be lookin' 'round fer another sheriff. I 've got plumb ter the limit o' patience in this game." Winston grasped the old man's uplifted arm, whirling him sharply around.
Sawyer never speaks three words without mentioning the House and the Speaker. General Gulpin sported his star, and looked fat and florid, but melancholy. His wife ordered away his dinner, just like honest Sancho's physician at Barataria. Botherby's stories about Lamartine are as old as the hills, since the barricades of 1848; and he could not get in a word or cut the slightest figure.
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