The boy shrank back, clung to the girl, who clutched the thin little
hand and looked about her desperately. Her eyes swept over strange
faces, rough-looking men, then, like an animal at bay, she ran to the
waiting-room with the child, and slammed the door violently. Walton
stared at the closed door, then at the valise in his hand.
The listeners outside heard hysterical sobs, and the soothing voice of
Mrs. Green, the agent's wife. Walton, pale with rage, glared at the
grinning faces about him, drew himself up, entered the waiting-room and
closed the door behind him with a bang. The mingled sounds of a girl's
sobs, a woman's angry tones, Walton's voice in _crescendo_ notes, then
the door opened and he dashed out, scattering those who obstructed his
wildly waving arms, and stopping at the door of Dunning's shop. It was
closed. A notice hung on the door. "OUT OF TOWN."
Walton hurried to the bar-room of the Willcox Hotel. His face was aflame
with rage; the hand he rested on the bar was shaking as though with
palsy. The occupants of the room grinned at him.
"Them the latest style in whiskers?" joked the bartender, winking at
another man.
"Mind your own affairs and give me a glass," ordered Walton.
Purposely misunderstanding him, the barkeeper held out a glass of liquor
and said, "You seem a leetle nervous, Walton."
The glass was struck to the counter. Walton screamed in maniacal fury,
"A looking-glass is what I want, you doggone idiot! I want to gaze on
my 'seraphic countenance' that seems to paralyze everybody. Look like
the 'green fields of Virginia,' do I? 'Rent me out during a drouth,'
will they? Where's a glass?"
"Keep calm, Walton, here's one;" the bartender handed out a small
mirror.
Silently Walton gazed at hair and beard of vivid emerald green. The
venomous glitter of his eyes was like that of an angry rattlesnake. He
laid the glass down and spoke with a voice that was quiet, but deadly.
"Some one put Dunning up to this, and I'll find out who it was, before I
get through." He flung out of the place and the men in the room glanced
at one another. They knew that some day, somebody would pay. Walton was
a man whose debts of personal animus, never outlawed by time, were sure
to be settled in full with compound interest.