"I tell you, Mr. Hunter is in mighty bad shape, he may die,"
he said. Clara turned to look at her husband and thought him totally
unaffected by what had happened. His face was quiet like her father's face.
The factory superintendent's voice went on explaining his part in the
adventures of the evening. Ignoring the pale workman who sat lost in the
shadows in a corner of the rear seat, he spoke as though he had undertaken
and accomplished the capture of the murderer single-handed. As he
afterwards explained to his wife, Ed felt he had been a fool not to come
alone. "I knew I could handle him all right," he explained. "I wasn't
afraid, but I had figured it all out he was crazy. That made me feel shaky.
When they were getting up a crowd to go out on the hunt, I says to myself,
I'll go alone. I says to myself, I'll bet he's gone out to that woods on
the Riggly farm where he and his wife used to go on Sundays. I started and
then I saw this other man standing on a corner and I made him come with me.
He didn't want to come and I wish I'd gone alone. I could have handled him
and I'd got all the credit."
In the car Ed told the story of the night in the streets of Bidwell. Some
one had seen Steve Hunter shot down in the street and had declared the
harness maker had done it and had then run away. A crowd had gone to the
harness shop and had found the body of Jim Gibson. On the floor of the shop
were the factory-made harnesses cut into bits.
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