"No, I'm not going any farther with you, Sol," said Joe quietly. "If there's any arresting to be done, I guess I can do it myself."
Greening was a self-important man in his small-bore way, who saw in this night's tragedy fine material for increasing his consequence, at least temporarily, in that community. The first man on the bloody scene, the man to shut up the room for the coroner, the man to make the arrest and deliver the murderer to the constable--all within half an hour. It was a distinction which Greening did not feel like yielding.
"Come on here, I tell you!" he commanded again.
"If you want to get on your horse and go after Bill, I'll wait right here till he comes," said Joe; "but I'll not go any farther with you. I didn't shoot Isom, Sol, and you know it. If you don't want to go after Bill, then I'll go on over there alone and tell him what's happened. If he wants to arrest me then, he can do it."
Seeing that by this arrangement much of his glory would get away from him, Greening stepped forward and reached out his hand, as if to compel submission. Joe lifted his own hand to intercept it with warning gesture.
"No, don't you touch me, Sol!" he cautioned.
Greening let his hand fall. He stepped back a pace, Joe's subdued, calm warning penetrating his senses like the sound of a blow on an anvil. Last week this gangling strip of a youngster was nothing but a boy, fetching and carrying in Isom Chase's barn-yard. Tonight, big and bony and broad-shouldered, he was a man, with the same outward gentleness over the iron inside of him as old Peter Newbolt before him; the same soft word in his mouth as his Kentucky father, who had, without oath or malediction, shot dead a Kansas Redleg, in the old days of border strife, for spitting on his boot.
Greening made a show of considering it a minute.
"Well, Joe, you go on over and tell him yourself," said he, putting on the front of generosity and confidence, "I know you won't run off."
"If I had anything to run off for, I'd go as quick as anybody, I guess," said Joe.
"I'll go and fetch the old lady over to keep company with Mrs. Chase," said Sol, hurriedly striking across the road.
Joe remained standing there a little while. The growing wind, which marked the high tide of night, lifted his hat-brim and let the moonlight fall upon his troubled face. Around him was the peace of the sleeping earth, with its ripe harvest in its hand; the scents of ripe leaves and fruit came out of the orchard; the breath of curing clover from the fields.