Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/270

 of mirror tacked up on the side of the car. He was staring into it.

His moaning stopped. The shock of his own awful horror must have revolted, shaken his very being. His hand groped weakly, subconsciously perhaps, for his pocket—his revolver—the end.

Again Lee shrieked as he struggled to free himself, and then, as Perley fired, he burst out into a peal of wild, discordant laughter. His mind was giving way. He began to gibber like a madman—that's the way they found him—with Perley's body pitched full across his chest.

Don't ask me. I told you Perley was a little, undersized, sawed-off man. I don't know, do I? The half-breed, physically, could have handled him like a baby, once he caught him unawares. That's all I know.

They buried Perley down at Big Cloud; and they buried Clancy where the posse dropped him, drilled full of holes. That's the story.

Lee? Charlie Lee? Why, he doesn't count, does he? He had nothing to do with it. Well, if you're interested in him I'll tell you. His college diploma never did him any good. Once he got ^better and out of the hospital, he took to drinking periodically—hard. Between times straight as a string, you understand, for six weeks say, then off again. That was fifteen years ago, and he's done it ever since. The doctors said that blow on the head unsettled him, skull splinter, or something like that; but medicine's not an exact science. The doctors were wrong. The trouble was deeper than the skull—it was in his soul. Lee drank to save