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.
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