"What is it?" they clamored impatiently. "Speak quick!" There was another
harmless shot from a fugitive, and then the Cross-Roaders, divining that
the diversion was in their favor, secured themselves in their decrepit
fastnesses and held their fire. Meanwhile, the flames crackled cheerfully
in Plattville ears. No matter what the prosecutor had to say, at least the
Skillett saloon and homestead were gone, and Bob Skillett and one other
would be sick enough to be good for a while.
"Listen," cried Warren Smith, and, rising in his stirrups again, read the
missive in his hand, a Western Union telegraph form. "Warren Smith,
Plattville," was the direction. "Found both shell-men. Police familiar
with both, and both wanted here. One arrested at noon in a second-hand
clothes store, wearing Harkless's hat, also trying dispose torn full-dress
coat known to have been worn by Harkless last night. Stains on lining
believed blood. Second man found later at freight-yards in empty lumber
car left Plattville 1 P.M., badly hurt, shot, and bruised. Supposed
Harkless made hard fight. Hurt man taken to hospital unconscious. Will
die. Hope able question him first and discover whereabouts body. Other man
refuses talk so far. Check any movement Cross-Roads. This clears Skillett,
etc. Come over on 9.15."
The telegram was signed by Homer and by Barrett, the superintendent of
police at Rouen.
"It's all a mistake, boys," the lawyer said, as he handed the paper to
Watts and Parker for inspection. "The ladies at the judge's were mistaken,
that's all, and this proves it. It's easy enough to understand: they were
frightened by the storm, and, watching a fence a quarter-mile away by
flashes of lightning, any one would have been confused, and imagined all
the horrors on earth. I don't deny but what I believed it for a while, and
I don't deny but the Cross-Roads is pretty tough, but you've done a good
deal here already, to-day, and we're saved in time from a mistake that
would have turned out mighty bad. This settles it. Homer got a wire from
Rouen to come over there, soon as they got track of the first man; that
was when we saw him on the Rouen accommodation."
A slightly cracked voice, yet a huskily tuneful one, was lifted
quaveringly on the air from the roadside, where an old man and a yellow
dog sat in the dust together, the latter reprieved at the last moment, his
surprised head rakishly garnished with a hasty wreath of dog-fennel
daisies.
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
While we go marching on!"