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"Bad luck cursing a dead man, Rickard," said Norton coldly. "What did you kill him for?" Kid Rickard's tongue ran back and forth between his colorless lips before he replied. "He tried to get me first," he said defiantly. "Who saw the shooting?" "Jim Galloway. And Antone." Rod Norton grunted his disgust with the situation. "Give me your gun," he commanded tersely. The Kid frowned.
Still, it has been my experience, that men like him, who have stood their ground, following their usual legitimate occupations, were always less liable to be molested than what might be termed birds of passage, such as Rickard Burke, Arthur Forrester, or Michael Davitt.
Then they brought a fairy-man to look at me, and he said it was a fairy and not Rickard at all that was in it, and I couldn't be telling you all the bad names he put on me and the things he said about me. And he said: 'Leave a pair of bagpipes near him, and maybe he'll play them.
"Who did it?" came the quick question. And then, before an answer could come, his voice ringing with the anger in it: "Antone or Kid Rickard? Which one?" He had shifted his rifle so that it was caught up under his left arm. His right hand, frank and unhidden, rested upon the butt of the heavy-caliber revolver sagging from his belt.
This morning come to me the Collectors for my Pollmoney; for which I paid for my title as Esquire and place of Clerk of Acts, and my head and wife's, and servants' and their wages, L40 17s; and though this be a great deal, yet it is a shame I should pay no more; that is, that I should not be assessed for my pay, as in the Victualling business and Tangier; and for my money, which, of my own accord, I had determined to charge myself with L1000 money, till coming to the Vestry, and seeing nobody of our ablest merchants, as Sir Andrew Rickard, to do it, I thought it not decent for me to do it, nor would it be thought wisdom to do it unnecessarily, but vain glory.
And so home to the Office, ended my letters, and, to spare my eyes, home, and played on my pipes, and so to bed. Up, and to church, where I saw Sir A. Rickard, though he be under the Black Rod, by order of the Lords' House, upon the quarrel between the East India Company and Skinner, which is like to come to a very great heat between the two Houses. At noon comes Mr. Mills and his wife, and Mr.
Kid Rickard and ten men with him, all Mexicans or breeds, crossed over into the next county yesterday, raided the county jail late this afternoon, shot poor Roberts, freed Moraga, and got away in a couple of big new touring-cars. Every man of them carried a rifle and side-arms." "Killed Roberts, huh?" Struve's frown gathered. "He's badly hurt, if not dead. The Kid did the shooting."
At noon, this being Holy Thursday, that is, Ascension Day, when the boys go on procession round the parish, we were to go to the Three Tuns' Tavern, to dine with the rest of the parish; where all the parish almost was, Sir Andrew Rickard and others; and of our house, J. Minnes, W. Batten, W. Pen, and myself; and Mr. Mills did sit uppermost at the table.
There came the low mutter of a voice hasty and with the quality of stern exhortation, the snap of the lock, and the door was jerked open. Norton's eyes, probing into every square foot of the chamber, took stock of Jim Galloway, and beyond him of Kid Rickard, slouching forward in a chair and rolling a cigarette. "Hello, Norton," said Galloway tonelessly. "Glad you showed up. There's been trouble."
When they drove me off, of course we had to send back Rickard, and there they found him the next morning, asleep in his bed, as sound as ever he was in his life. "And that was not all. The lesson that he'd had was enough for him, and he left drinking and fighting and swearing, and he helped his old father and his brothers on the farm, and he was another man altogether. And so it's as I told you.
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