"But need there might be."
"Go look, Dabb."
"I'll gao, too," Pete offered.
"Dabb's goin'."
Rifle in the crook of his arm, Dabb left the cabin. Jeff waited
uneasily. Dabb's education might be a bit short in the conjugation of
verbs and the more complex forms of mathematics, but it had taught him
all about ballistics. When he came back he would know whether or not
Johnny had been shot from ambush.
If he hadn't been--Jeff looked at Barr's stormy eyes and shuddered.
Twenty minutes later, Dabb returned. He came slowly, and somewhat
shrunkenly, as though he had been both derided and belittled. He stood
in the doorway, not looking at the rest, and when he spoke his voice was
muffled and reluctant.
"Hit's true, Barr. Hit's true enough. Whosoever shot Blazer was
crouchin' in a little patch of evergreens a hunnert an' fifty steps from
the road." He said, as though that was vastly important, "With my own
eyes I saw his crouch. He broke some twigs the better to see."
Something came into the cabin with him, an unseen but heavy and mournful
something that seemed, within itself, to rob everyone of the power of
speech. The Whitneys looked sidewise at each other and Barr spoke
slowly,
"Thus ye saw?"
"Thus I saw."
"Whar did the lead strike?"
"The tree," Dabb answered dully. "Hit's buried in the tree."
There was silence which Barr broke with a soul-desolated cry, "This day
I know shame!"
They were weighted as though by heavy burdens, and Jeff understood why
they scourged themselves. By the cowardly action of one of their number,
something they could never get back had been taken from all of them.
They must hang their heads because among them walked a man who was not a
man. Jeff rubbed salt into their wounds.
"You can all be proud of yourselves."
It was as though they did not hear. This terrible crime, this heinous
sin, had been committed, but they did not want to believe.