Now bent upon secreting himself inside the carriage until the way was clear, and, in the meantime, determine what was the most likely route Orlick had taken to escape Hatfield's vengeance, Buddy opened the carriage door, but fell back, amazed and startled, as the limp body of a dead man tumbled out upon him. Recovering quickly from this surprise, Buddy took a look at the face. The body lolled half out of the vehicle, one arm and the head hanging down between the wheels. Although the face was outward, it was at the same time downward past the step of the vehicle, and in this inverted position the boy could not have recognized his best friend in the wan moonlight.
He shot a swift look around him and across toward Eversole's store--then laying his rifle on the ground, he lifted the dead man's head up and scrutinized it closely. As Buddy had never known Steve Barlow, the face was strange to him, and he was in the act of easing his gruesome burden down, when soft sounds like muffled footsteps startled him. They were close to him, seemingly coming from the opposite side of the carriage.
Without waiting an instant or even looking a second time, Buddy jerked his hands free, grabbed his gun, and made a headlong dive across the plank-walk and sprawled against the picket fence, at bay, but with gun pointed toward the carriage and ready to die fighting and take a toll for his own life.
His little heart beat wildly for the next few seconds. Affrighted, he had dropped his burden so suddenly that its weight had jerked the other arm outside, and now the inverted dead face swung to and fro, and gesticulated between the wheels in the moonlight. Then under and behind this grim pantomime, the boy could discern the vague outlines of legs in the dense shadow cast by the carriage.
Buddy did not court shots from the front, but he had always dreaded a shot in the back, and he knew that the McGills would show no quarter, not even to a boy, much less a Lutts boy. In reality, it was less than fifteen seconds that Buddy lay with finger in the trigger-guard, staring at that veiled, menacing shadow stirring near at hand, but it seemed very much longer to the boy. He could not endure the suspense, and just as he began to crawfish stealthily along the fence, a riderless, unshod horse stepped leisurely from the gloom and walked noiselessly through the thick dust.