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Updated: May 25, 2025
And Perris made no attempt to throw the rope again. He allowed it to lie limp and wet on the gravel, but turning to watch that magnificent body, shining from the river, he saw the lines of Hervey's hunters coming swinging across the plain, riding to the limit of the speed of their horses. This was the end, then. In ten minutes, or less, they would be on him, and he without a gun in his hands!
The whole damned affair has never been out of my head for a whole day. I've gone over every detail of it a thousand times, Lew!" "So has Perris," answered Lew Hervey solemnly. "That slug of yours when the doctor cut it out of his leg he had it fixed up and now he wears it for a fob so's he won't forget the gent that shot him down that night when he wasn't armed!"
Thick darkness filled its doorway and the window, though the rest of the clearing was still permeated with a faint afterglow of the sunset. "He ain't here," said Little Joe softly, as he came to the side of the watchful foreman. "Don't be too sure," said the other. "I'd trust this Perris and take about as many chances with him as I would with a rattler in a six-by-six room.
The lips of Red Jim twitched to a sneering malevolence mingled with gloom. "It's up to him?" he echoed. "Then I might of spared myself all of this talk." It would all be over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal. Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains.
He even drew Perris slightly towards him, but the latter persisted facing the girl even though his words were for the foreman. She was growing truly frightened. "Tell Hervey to take his hand off me," said the horse-breaker. "He's old enough to know better!"
"Ay! ay!" he said at last, in a tone of reflection mingled with dawning interest, "I ance kent a terrible rascal cam frae owerby that gait: what ca' they the perris ye're frae?" Cosmo told him. "Lord bless me!" cried the old man, and came close up to him. "But na!" he resumed, and stepped a pace back, "somebody's been tellin ye!" Cosmo gave him no answer.
"I put my penny, and whiles my saxpence, intil the plate at the door when I gang to the kirk an' I was jist thinkin' I wad win there the morn's nicht at farest, whan I turnt an' saw ye stan'in there, sir; an' little I thoucht but that's neither here nor there, I'm thinkin'. I tell as feow lees as I can; I never sweir, nor tak the name o' the Lord in vain, anger me 'at likes; I sell naething but the best whusky; I never hae but broth to my denner upo' the Lord's day, an' broth canna brak the Sawbath, simmerin' awa' upo' the bar o' the grate, an' haudin' no lass frae the kirk; I confess, gien ye wull be speirin', 'at I dinna read my buik sae aften as maybe I sud; but, 'deed, sir, tho' I says't 'at sud haud my tongue, ye hae waur folk i' yer perris nor Benjie Croale's widow; an' gien ye wunna hae a drap to weet yer ain whustle for the holy wark ye hae afore ye the morn's mornin', I maun gang an' mak my bed, for the lass is laid up wi' a bealt thoom, an' I maunna lat a' thing gang to dirt an' green bree; though I'm sure it's rale kin' o' ye to come to luik efter me, an' that's mair nor Maister Rennie, honest gentleman, ever did me the fawvour o', a' the time he ministered the perris.
Greatest of all was one overshadowing fact: she loved Red Jim Perris! What did it matter that she had seen him so few times, and spoke to him so few words? A word might be a thunderclap; a glance might carry into the very soul of a man. And indeed she felt that she had seen that proud, gay, impatient soul in Jim. What he thought of her was another matter.
There was something so adventurously restless about Red Perris that she thought of a thoroughbred fresh from the stable; just as a blooded hunter is apt to be "too much horse under the saddle," so she was inclined to feel that Perris was "too much man." Something about him was always moving.
They saw, while they shouted in triumph, that Alcatraz instinctively shortened his pace to keep his slipping burden from falling. "He's done!" yelled Hervey, and shoving his rifle back in its holster, he spurred again in the pursuit. But Red Perris was not done.
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