"The Siwash flew the coop," announced Deputy Lunt in amazement so frank that it was ludicrous; but so great were the distractions round that for some time he was unable to get anyone to listen to his excited clamorings.
Adam John was indeed gone. Having surrendered voluntarily and sought justice according to the law of his new citizenship, and having failed, in his judgment, to get it, he confessed no further obligations. In the general confusion, he had departed—unobtrusively.
It was Scanlon who brought the word of the shooting to his chief, whereupon Mr. Boland's startled features framed a slowly mounting horror; he half-rose, with white showing in his eyes, a manifestation seldom observed in those deeply caverned orbs. "Horace . . . assassinated? . . . Assassinated!" In the changed inflection with which he breathed and then repeated that bloody word, the stern practical nature of Old Two Blades registered first his sense of shock and second his acceptance of the cruel fact that a man very useful to him had been stricken in the line of duty. He settled slowly back into his chair, the network of his cares deepening upon his forehead. Solemnly, his head was shaken from side to side.
"This community—that I have created," he reproached, in horrified voice, "that for thir-r-ty years I have been setting an example to—becoming hysterical—excitable—inclined to violence. And now, they shoot a judge down on the bench!" His soul revolted at such bloody profanation of the very altar of justice; at the same time that his heart was shot through with
