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But I’d no more than got the words out of my mouth than the noise rolled into the outer rooms of our headquarters like a wave, and there was a violent hammering on the door of our room, some one calling my name in a loud frightened voice. I threw open the door and Hugo Siffles fell in, his pig’s eyes starting out of his pale, foolish face.

“Come with me!” he shouted, all in one breath, and laying hold of me by the lapel of my coat, tried to drag me after him. “There’s hell to pay! Joe Lane came into Trimmer’s headquarters, drunk, twenty minutes ago, and slapped Passley Trimmer’s face for what he said to us this afternoon. Link Trimmer came in, a minute later, drunk too, and heard what had happened. He followed Joe to Hodge’s saloon and shot him. They’ve carried him to the drug-store and he’s asked to speak to you.”

I had the satisfaction of kicking that little cuss through the door ahead of me, though I knew it was myself I ought to have kicked.

It was true that Joe had asked to speak to me, but when I reached the drug-store the doctor wouldn’t let me come into the back-room where he lay, so I sat on a stool in the store. They’d turned all the people out, except four or five friends of Joe’s; and the glass doors and the windows were solid with flattened faces, some of them coloured by the blue and green lights so that it sickened me, and all staring horribly. After about four years the doctor’s assistant came out to get something from a shelf and I jumped at him, getting mighty little satisfaction, you can be sure.

“It seems to be very serious indeed,” was all he would say. I knew that for myself, because one of the men in the store had told me that it was in the left side.

Half-an-hour after this–by the clock–the young man came out again and called us in to carry Joe home. It was not more than a hundred yards to the old Lane place, and six of us, walking very slowly, carried him on a cot through the crowd. He was conscious, for he thanked us in a weakish whisper, when we lifted him carefully into his own bed. Then the doctor sent us all out except the assistant, and we went to the front porch and waited, hating the crowd that had lined up against the fence and about the gate. They looked like a lot of buzzards; I couldn’t bear the sight of them, so I went back into the little hall and sat down near Joe’s door.

After a while the assistant opened the door, holding a glass pitcher in his hand.

“Here,” he said, when he saw me, “will you fill this with cold water from the well?”

I took it and hurried out to the kitchen, where four or five people were sitting and glumly whispering around an old coloured woman, Joe’s cook, who was crying and rocking herself in a chair. I hushed her up and told her to show me the pump. It was in an orchard behind the house, and was one of those old-fashioned things that sound like a siren whistle with the hiccups.

It took me about five minutes to get the water up, and when I got back to Joe’s room, a woman was there with the doctors. It was Miss Rainey. She had her hat off, her sleeves were rolled up and, though her face was the whitest I ever saw, she was cool and steady. It was she who took the water from me at the door.

I heard low voices in the parlour, where a lamp was lit, and I went in there. Mary was sitting on a sofa, with a handkerchief hard against her eyes, and Hector was standing in the middle of the room, saying over and over, “My God!” and shaking. I went to the sofa and sat by Mary with my hand on her shoulder.