"I'm not quite clear about what happened afterwards. They went away, not
far, I think. There's an old shed, a cattle-shelter, near there, and I
think the storm drove them under it to wait for a slack. It seemed a long
time. Sometimes I was conscious, sometimes I wasn't. I thought I might be
drowned, but I suppose the rain was good for me. Then I remember being in
motion, being dragged and carried a long way. They took me up a steep,
short slope, and set me down near the top. I knew that was the railroad
embankment, and I thought they meant to lay me across the track, but it
didn't occur to them, I suppose--they are not familiar with melodrama--and
a long time after that I felt and heard a great banging and rattling under
me and all about me, and it came to me that they had disposed of me by
hoisting me into an empty freight-car. The odd part of it was that the car
wasn't empty, for there were two men already in it, and I knew them by
what they said to me.
"They were the two shell-men who cheated Hartley Bowlder, and they weren't
vindictive; they even seemed to be trying to help me a little, though
perhaps they were only stealing my clothes, and maybe they thought for
them to do anything unpleasant would be superfluous; I could see that they
thought I was done for, and that they had been hiding in the car when I
was put there. I asked them to try to call the train men for me, but they
wouldn't listen, or else I couldn't make myself understood. That's all.
The rest is a blur. I haven't known anything more until those surgeons
were here. Please tell me how long ago it happened. I shall not die, I
think; there are a good many things I want to know about." He moved
restlessly and the nurse soothed him.
Meredith rose and left the room with a noiseless step. He went out to the
stars again, and looked to them to check the storm of rage and sorrow that
buffeted his bosom. He understood lynching, now the thing was home to him,
and his feeling was no inspiration of a fear lest the law miscarry; it was
the itch to get his own hand on the rope. Horner came out presently, and
whispered a long, broad, profound curse upon the men of the Cross-Roads,
and Meredith's gratitude to him was keen. Barrett went away, soon after,
leaving the cab for the gentlemen from Plattville. Meredith had a strange,
unreasonable desire to kick Barrett, possibly for his sergeant's sake.
Warren Smith sat in the ward with the nurse and Gay, and the room was very
quiet. It was a long vigil.