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Updated: May 21, 2025
"I reckon some of Duff's crowd slipped out of the fight, got the two youngsters, and slipped away with them," Bodson answered. "Then it was Duff he was one of 'em," returned Jeff, with a strong conviction. "From what I've seen of Duff to-night he'd rather do a running trick than a fighting one." "It would take two to carry both youngsters away. Who was the other one?" Rafe wondered aloud.
"Not unless we have to do so remember!" ordered the gambler. "We want, if possible, to take 'em alive." Let us now go back to the two men whom Duff and Ashby were watching so closely. They were Rafe Bodson and Jeff Moore. Both had come out of the recent fighting unharmed. Neither Rafe nor Jeff had fired a shot at the invading forces led by Hawkins.
With cries of anger, several of the men sprang toward Jeff, who had bared his sheath knife and was about to free Tom and Harry. "Here stop that, you traitors!" roared Duff, leaping forward. "I've four shots left, Jim," remarked Rafe Bodson calmly, as he ceased firing. "Call me names, if you think it wise." Like a flash Duff drew one of his own revolvers.
He 'lows dat she knows whar old Mars' Rafe Dudley, his uncle, hid a million dollahs endyoin' de wah, an' huh tongue's paralyse' so she can't tell 'im an' he's be'n tryin' ter fin' out fer de las' twenty-five years. I wo'ked out hyuh one summer on plantation, an' I seen 'em gwine on like dat many 'n' many a time.
He plunged into the racing stream and disappeared. The huge timber rode over the smaller log and buried it from sight. But its tail swung around and the great log was headed straight down the river again. As its smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footing on the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan could not imagine.
Griggs is now a prosperous man, and, best of all, he has his little daughter with him. Lessee Carter has flourished in the new railroad hotel. Rafe Bodson and Jeff Moore are his clerks. The day came when Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton were able to apply the final and most severe test to the roadbed that ran across the Man-killer quicksand.
Tom laughed in his slow way and lumbered out. Uncle Henry did not hear this, and Nan was worried. She thought Aunt Kate was inclined to side with her youngest boy. Rafe would always be "the baby" to Aunt Kate. At any rate Nan was very sorry the quarrel had arisen over her. And she was careful to say nothing to fan further the flame of anger between her cousins.
Thereafter the Judge gave her the most rigid attention. "Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he was troubled. 'What is it, mon Rafe? I asked. He groaned and said one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six horses.
So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very beginning: "Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know who had done it.
To the choicest seat in the very largest herring-box, the back of which was stylishly bedizened by the splendors of the star bedquilt, I heard my own name called: "Major Paul Henry and the Widder Rafe!" Who and where was the Widow Rafe? Lo! Vesty stepped out. To be sure the formal, the flag-raising, the "Occasion" name of Vesty!
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