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 "they couldn't find a mark of a bullet on that feller from top to toe."

"No-o-o!" said Zora, incredulously.

"That's the joke!" said Shad.

"I think it's a pretty burn sort of a joke," she said, her displeasure evident, an opinion in which Dunham fully concurred.

"They felt him over, and turned him and poked him," Shad related, "but they couldn't find a shadder of a bullet nowheres. Schubert was kind of put out about it. He don't like to keep 'em around, you know. He says: 'Vell, I guess I'll haf to let him lay around two or three days to see if he's deadt.' That feller he kind of rose up and grunted. 'Who in the hell said I was dead?' he says. 'Who in the hell said I was dead?

Shad roared, and Moore roared. Dunham was pretty certain that Zora did some roaring of her own. But there was no mirth in Bill Dunham's breast; he didn't see where the joke came in. All he was conscious of was a vast lifting of relief, a peaceful, delicious clearing of his troubled conscience. His hands were clean: there was no blood of a man upon his hands.

"He's a fittified man," Shad explained. "I used to know him down in the Nation. He tuck a fit the wink you throwed down on him, and you missed him as clean as a drum. Dang good joke on you, kid!"

"Ain't it?" said Bill, his heart as light as a feather. "But I guess I can live it down."

So what he had thought an adventurous and tragic day had ended in an explosion of comedy, leaving him