But now it had slipped down till it hung loose around his neck by the string. They was enough light to see he wasn't nothing but a young feller. He raised himself slow as I come near him, leaning on one arm and trying to set up. The other arm hung loose and helpless. Half setting up that-a-way he made a feel at his belt with his good hand, as I come near. But that good arm was his prop, and when he took it off the ground he fell back.
His hand come away empty from his belt.
The big six-shooter he had been feeling fur wasn't in its holster, anyhow. It had fell out when he tumbled. I picked it up in the road jest a few feet from his shot-gun, and stood there with it in my hand, looking down at him.
"Well," he says, in a drawly kind of voice, slow and feeble, but looking at me steady and trying to raise himself agin, "yo' can finish yo' little job now--yo' shot me from the darkness, and now yo' done got my pistol. I reckon yo' better shoot AGIN."
"I don't want to rub it in none," I says, "with you down and out, but from what I seen around this town to-night I guess you and your own gang got no GREAT objections to shooting from the dark yourselves.""Why don't yo' shoot then?" he says. "It most suttinly is YO' turn now." And he never batted an eye.
"Bo," I says, "you got nerve. I LIKE you, Bo.
I didn't shoot you, and I ain't going to. The feller that did has went. I'm going to get you out of this. Where you hurt?""Hip," he says, "but that ain't much. The thing that bothers me is this arm. It's done busted. Ifell on it."
I drug him out of the road and back of the lumber pile I had been laying on, and hurt him considerable a-doing it.
"Now," I says, "what can I do fur you?"
"I reckon yo' better leave me," he says, "without yo' want to get yo'self mixed up in all this.""If I do," I says, "you may bleed to death here: or anyway you would get found in the morning and be run in.""Yo' mighty good to me," says he, "considering yo' are no kin to this here part of the country at all. I reckon by yo' talk yo' are one of them damn Yankees, ain't yo'?"In Illinoise a Yankee is some one from the East, but down South he is anybody from north of the Ohio, and though that there war was fought forty years ago some of them fellers down there don't know damn and Yankee is two words yet. But shucks!--they don't mean no harm by it! So I tells him I am a damn Yankee and asts him agin if I can do anything fur him.
"Yes," he says, "yo' can tell a friend of mine Bud Davis has happened to an accident, and get him over here quick with his wagon to tote me home."I was to go down the railroad track past them burning warehouses till I come to the third street, and then turn to my left. "The third house from the track has got an iron picket fence in front of it," says Bud, "and it's the only house in that part of town which has. Beauregard Peoples lives there. He is kin to me.""Yes," I says, "and Beauregard is jest as likely as not going to take a shot out of the front window at me, fur luck, afore I can tell him what I want.
It seems to be a kind of habit in these here parts to-night--I'm getting homesick fur Illinoise. But I'll take a chancet.""He won't shoot," says Bud, "if yo' go about it right. Beauregard ain't going to be asleep with all this going on in town to-night. Yo' rattle on the iron gate and he'll holler to know what yo' all want.""If he don't shoot first," I says.
