It was patent that the Kid had leaped to the natural
conclusion that he had killed Charley Bedloe; he understood the emotion
which he had seen depicted in the Kid's twisted face as Charley
staggered and fell at his brother's feet. It was a great, blind grief,
unutterable, wrathful, terrible, like the unreasoning, tempestuous grief
of a wild thing, of a mother bear whose cubs had been shot before her
eyes. For the one thing which it seemed God had put into the natures of
these men was love, the love which led them to seek no wife, no friend,
no confidante outside their own close fraternity. And yet the night had
passed and neither the Kid nor Ed had come.
"Something happened to stop them," mused Thornton. "For a few hours
only. They'll come. And I'd give a hundred dollars to know who the
jasper was that put that bullet into Charley."
He went back into his cabin, put his two guns on the table, threw out
the cartridges, and for fifteen minutes oiled and cleaned. Then, with a
careful eye to every shell, he loaded them again. When he once more
threw his door open and went outside his eyes were a little regretful
but very, very hard.
He was inclined to believe that Winifred was mistaken in judging Ben
Broderick's to be the brains of this thing.
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