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Laskar was still groaning, and finally Harlan walked to him and pushed him with a contemptuous foot. "Get up, you sneak!" he ordered. And Laskar, groaning, holding his chest where Purgatory's hoofs had struck him staggered to his feet and looked with piteously pleading eyes at the big man who stood near him, unmoved by the spectacle of suffering he presented.
He watched while the man unbuckled his cartridge belt and threw it the pistol still in the holster into the sand at Purgatory's hoofs. Then he stepped to the man, sheathed one of his pistols, and ran the free hand over the other's clothing in search of other weapons.
Harlan got down and ran a hand over Purgatory's neck, while trailing the reins over his head. "Man-killer," he warned. "Don't touch him. He ain't been rode by nobody but me, an' he won't stand for nobody foolin' around him."
"Then with his monks the Prior anon, With Crosses and with Gonfanon Went to that hole forthright, Thro' which Knight Owain went below, There, as of burning fire the glow, They saw a gleam of light; And right amidst that beam of light He came up, Owain, God's own knight, By this knew every man That he in Paradise had been, And Purgatory's pains had seen, And was a holy man."
Once when he had dropped behind a little farther than usual, he leaned over and whispered into Purgatory's ear: "She's sure ignorin' us, ain't she, you black son-of-a-gun! She ain't looked back here more'n three times in the last five minutes!" And yet Harlan's jocular mood did not endure long.
But he sneered as with the movement he sent a bullet into the man's chest; his lips curving with slight irony when Dolver's gun went off, the bullet throwing up sand at Purgatory's forehoofs.
"This is the stable. Over there is the ranchhouse. Evidently the men are all away somewhere." She got off the pony, removed the saddle and bridle, carried them into the stable, came out again, and opened a gate in the fence, through which she sent "Billy." Then she closed the gate and turned to Harlan, who had dismounted and was standing at Purgatory's head.
But no man could have told that he looked at Laskar directly, except Laskar himself, who would have sworn that Harlan did not remove his gaze from him, once he had slipped from Purgatory's back. For Harlan's eyes told nothing. They seemed to be gazing at nothing, and at everything.
Purgatory's your portion, Argile, for a Sunday's work that makes our name a mock to-day across the envious world. Take to your books and your preachers, sir you're for the cloister and not for the field; and if I live a hundred years, I'll deny I went with you to Inverlochy.
"I lifted his gun an' his rifle, an' Dolver's gun, an' throwed them under Purgatory my horse. Laskar has tried to get them, an' Purgatory's raised some objection." He stepped back and peered around the rock.
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