When he reached the top, a merry youth, with a
red, hatless head was splitting the dirt road toward him, his
reins in his teeth, and a pistol in each hand, which he was
letting off alternately into the inoffensive earth and toward the
unrebuking heavens--that seemed a favourite way in those mountains
of defying God and the devil--and behind him galloped a dozen
horsemen to the music of throat, pistol and iron hoof.
The fiery-headed youth's horse swerved and shot by. Hale hardly
knew that the rider even saw him, but the coming ones saw him afar
and they seemed to be charging him in close array. Hale stopped
his horse a little to the right of the centre of the road, and
being equally helpless against an inherited passion for
maintaining his own rights and a similar disinclination to get out
of anybody's way--he sat motionless. Two of the coming horsemen,
side by side, were a little in advance.
"Git out o' the road!" they yelled. Had he made the motion of an
arm, they might have ridden or shot him down, but the simple
quietness of him as he sat with hands crossed on the pommel of his
saddle, face calm and set, eyes unwavering and fearless, had the
effect that nothing else he could have done would have brought
about--and they swerved on either side of him, while the rest
swerved, too, like sheep, one stirrup brushing his, as they swept
by.
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