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“He’s gone for good, and he left that rifle here on purpose,” said the Left Bower in a low voice, taking the weapon almost tenderly in his hands.

“Drop it, then!” said the Right Bower. The voice was that of his brother, but suddenly changed with passion. The two other partners drew back in alarm.

“I’ll not leave it here for the first comer,” said the Left Bower, calmly, “because we’ve been fools and he too. It’s too good a weapon for that.”

“Drop it, I say!” said the Right Bower, with a savage stride towards him.

The younger brother brought the rifle to a half charge with a white face but a steady eye.

“Stop where you are!” he said collectedly. “Don’t row with me, because you haven’t either the grit to stick to your ideas or the heart to confess them wrong. We’ve followed your lead, and–here we are! The camp’s broken up–the Old Man’s gone–and we’re going. And as for the d—-d rifle”–

“Drop it, do you hear!” shouted the Right Bower, clinging to that one idea with the blind pertinacity of rage and a losing cause. “Drop it!”

The Left Bower drew back, but his brother had seized the barrel with both hands. There was a momentary struggle, a flash through the half-lighted cabin, and a shattering report. The two men fell back from each other; the rifle dropped on the floor between them.

The whole thing was over so quickly that the other two partners had not had time to obey their common impulse to separate them, and consequently even now could scarcely understand what had passed. It was over so quickly that the two actors themselves walked back to their places, scarcely realizing their own act.

A dead silence followed. The Judge and Union Mills looked at each other in dazed astonishment, and then nervously set about their former habits, apparently in that fatuous belief common to such natures, that they were ignoring a painful situation. The Judge drew the barrel towards him, picked up the cards, and began mechanically to “make a patience,” on which Union Mills gazed with ostentatious interest, but with eyes furtively conscious of the rigid figure of the Right Bower by the chimney and the abstracted face of the Left Bower at the door. Ten minutes had passed in this occupation, the Judge and Union Mills conversing in the furtive whispers of children unavoidably but fascinatedly present at a family quarrel, when a light step was heard upon the crackling brushwood outside, and the bright panting face of the Old Man appeared upon the threshold. There was a shout of joy; in another moment he was half-buried in the bosom of the Right Bower’s shirt, half-dragged into the lap of the Judge, upsetting the barrel, and completely encompassed by the Left Bower and Union Mills. With the enthusiastic utterance of his name the spell was broken.

Happily unconscious of the previous excitement that had provoked this spontaneous unanimity of greeting, the Old Man, equally relieved, at once broke into a feverish announcement of his discovery. He painted the details with, I fear, a slight exaggeration of coloring, due partly to his own excitement, and partly to justify their own. But he was strangely conscious that these bankrupt men appeared less elated with their personal interest in their stroke of fortune than with his own success. “I told you he’d do it,” said the Judge, with a reckless unscrupulousness of the statement that carried everybody with it; “look at him! the game little pup.” “Oh, no! he ain’t the right breed, is he?” echoed Union Mills with arch irony, while the Right and Left Bower, grasping either hand, pressed a proud but silent greeting that was half new to him, but wholly delicious. It was not without difficulty that he could at last prevail upon them to return with him to the scene of his discovery, or even then restrain them from attempting to carry him thither on their shoulders on the plea of his previous prolonged exertions. Once only there was a momentary embarrassment. “Then you fired that shot to bring me back?” said the Old Man, gratefully. In the awkward silence that followed, the hands of the two brothers sought and grasped each other, penitently. “Yes,” interposed the Judge with delicate tact, “ye see the Right and Left Bower almost quarreled to see which should be the first to fire for ye. I disremember which did”–“I never touched the trigger,” said the Left Bower, hastily. With a hurried backward kick, the Judge resumed, “It went off sorter spontaneous.”