Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/299

Rh wild, Steve—wild, for I'd had a difference with Jim and I knew Jim had had a difference with Len—over me. So I believed it! But I had no gun. I never carried one, you know. Neal gave me one and told me to go and shoot him, or Jim'd shoot me, too. And I shot old Jim—shot him in the back; that's the kind of man I was—no nerve. I couldn't face him when I did it. But I've faced him often enough since, God knows! By night and by day; by foul weather or by fair weather; for old Jim and I have got up and gone to bed together ever since—thirty years. And it's made me what I am—you see, I never had the nerve. I told you!"

"But Neal, Enoch? How did you come to shoot Neal two weeks ago—how did all that make you?" Sheppard urged excitedly.

"I'm telling you! Those two weeks ago—two weeks ago to-day, young Jim came up into the woods red hot; for he had the papers he showed you showing Neal had cheated him out of money. He met Chapin and me, too, and told us and showed us the papers. There was one paper there that didn't mean anything to young Jim or to you or to Chapin, or to anyone else that didn't know old Jim intimately—old Jim had his own way of putting things—but it meant a lot to me. For all these years I've been telling you about—all these years I've been carrying old Jim with me, getting up and lying down with him, and whenever he came to me, I'd been saying to him, "I know, Jim, I killed you; but it was justice; you killed my brother!' But that paper made me know different. It made me know it wasn't old Jim that killed Len, Steve; it was