progression, the weaker in
the line held up by the more enduring. They were experiencing in a small
and colorless measure, as faint by comparison, certainly, as the smell
of smoke to the feel of fire on the naked skin, what they had given
Morgan in the hour of their cruel mastery.
At last one of them could stumble on no farther. He fell, dragging down
two others who were not able to sustain his weight. There Morgan left
them, a mile or more beyond the river, knowing they would not have far
to travel before they came across somebody who would set them free.
The Dutchman, stronger and fresher than any of his companions, turned as
if he would speak when Morgan started to leave. Morgan checked his horse
to hear what the fellow might have to say, but nothing came out of the
ugly mouth but a grin of such derision, such mockery, such hate, that
Morgan felt as if the bright day contracted to shadows and a chill crept
into the pelting heat of the sun. He thought, gravely and soberly, that
he would be sparing the world at large, and himself specifically, future
pain and trouble by putting this scoundrel out of the way as a man would
remove a vicious beast.
Whatever justification the past, the present, or the future might plead
for this course, Morgan was too much himself again to yield. He turned
from them, giving the Dutchman his life to make out of it what he might.
From the top one of the ridges such as billowed like swells of the sea
that gray-green, treeless plain, Morgan looked back. All of them but
the Dutchman were either lying or sitting on the ground, beaten and
winded by the torture of their bonds and the hard drive of more than
three miles in the burning sun. The Dutchman still kept his feet,
although the drag of the pole upon him must have been sore and heavy, as
if he must stand to send his curse out after the man who had bent him to
his humiliation.
And Morgan knew that the Dutchman was not a conquered man, nor bowed in
his spirit, nor turned one moment away from his thought of revenge.
Again the bright day seemed to contract and grow chill around him, like
the oncoming shadow and breath of storm. He felt that this man would
return in his day to trouble him, low-devising, dark and secret and
meanly covert as a wolf prowling in the night.
The last look Morgan had of the Dutchman he was gazing that way still,
his face peculiarly white, the weight of the pole and his fallen
comrades dragging down on his bo
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